Chapter LXI. Of what befell Don Quixote on his entry into Barcelona, with other things that have more of truth than of wit

Three days and three nights Don Quixote spent with Roque, and had he spent three hundred years he would not have lacked things to see and marvel at in his way of life: here they woke at dawn, there they ate; sometimes they fled, without knowing from whom, and at other times they waited, without knowing for whom. They slept on their feet, breaking off their sleep, moving from one place to another. It was all posting spies, listening to sentinels, blowing on the matches of the harquebuses, though they carried few of these, because they all used pedreñales. Roque spent the nights apart from his men, in parts and places of which they could have no knowledge; for the viceroy of Barcelona had put out so many proclamations on his life that they kept him restless and fearful, and he dared not trust anyone, fearing that his very own men would either kill him or hand him over to the law: a life, to be sure, miserable and wearisome.

At last, by unfrequented roads, by shortcuts and hidden paths, Roque, Don Quixote, and Sancho set out for Barcelona with six other squires. They reached its beach on the eve of Saint John at night, and Roque, embracing Don Quixote and Sancho, to whom he gave the ten escudos he had promised, which he had not given him until then, left them, with a thousand offers made on the one side and on the other.

Roque went back; Don Quixote stayed waiting for day, just as he was, on horseback, and it was not long before the face of the white dawn began to look out from the balconies of the East, bringing joy to the grass and the flowers instead of to the ear; though at that same instant the ear too was gladdened by the sound of many shawms and kettledrums, the noise of bells, and the “Tramp, tramp, make way, make way!” of horsemen who, it seemed, were coming out of the city. The dawn gave way to the sun, which, with a face bigger than a buckler, was rising little by little over the lowest rim of the horizon.

Don Quixote and Sancho cast their eyes on every side: they saw the sea, until then unseen by them; it seemed to them very wide and broad, far more so than the lagoons of Ruidera they had seen in La Mancha; they saw the galleys that lay along the beach, which, lowering their awnings, showed themselves full of streamers and pennants that fluttered in the wind and kissed and swept the water; on board sounded bugles, trumpets, and shawms, which near and far filled the air with sweet and warlike strains. They began to move and to make a sort of skirmish over the calm waters, answered in almost the same manner by countless gentlemen who were riding out of the city on handsome horses and in showy liveries. The soldiers on the galleys fired off countless guns, to which those on the walls and forts of the city replied, and the heavy artillery rent the winds with a fearful roar, answered by the gangway cannons of the galleys. The glad sea, the joyous earth, the clear air, clouded only now and then by the smoke of the guns, seemed to be filling and breeding a sudden delight in all the people.

Sancho could not imagine how those bulks moving over the sea could have so many feet. At this point those in liveries came galloping, with shouts, lililíes, and hullabaloo, to where Don Quixote stood in suspense and astonishment, and one of them, who was the one Roque had sent word to, said in a loud voice to Don Quixote:

“Welcome to our city be the mirror, the beacon, the star, and the north star of all knight-errantry, in the fullest extent thereof. Welcome, I say, be the valiant Don Quixote of La Mancha: not the false, not the fictitious, not the apocryphal one that false histories have shown us these days, but the true, the lawful, and the faithful one that Cide Hamete Benengeli, flower of historians, described for us.”

Don Quixote did not answer a word, nor did the gentlemen wait for him to answer, but, wheeling and wheeling again with the others who followed them, they began to ride a tangled caracole around Don Quixote, who, turning to Sancho, said:

“These men know us well: I will wager they have read our history, and even the Aragonese’s, newly printed.”

The gentleman who had spoken to Don Quixote came back again and said to him:

“Let your grace, Señor Don Quixote, come with us, for we are all your servants and great friends of Roque Guinart.”

To which Don Quixote answered:

“If courtesies beget courtesies, yours, sir knight, is the daughter or a very close kinswoman of those of the great Roque. Take me where you will, for I shall have no will but yours, and the more so if you choose to employ it in your service.”

The gentleman answered him with words no less courteous than these, and, all enclosing him in their midst, to the sound of the shawms and kettledrums, they made their way with him toward the city, on entering which the Evil One, who ordains everything evil, and the boys, who are more evil than the Evil One, saw to it that two of them, mischievous and bold, slipped in through all the crowd, and, one lifting the gray’s tail and the other Rocinante’s, stuck and fixed a bunch of furze under each. The poor animals felt the new spurs, and, clamping their tails down, increased their discomfort, so that, bucking a thousand times, they threw their masters to the ground. Don Quixote, mortified and affronted, went to take the plume from his old nag’s tail, and Sancho the one from his gray’s. Those who were escorting Don Quixote would have liked to punish the boys’ boldness, but it was not possible, because they hid themselves among more than a thousand others who were following them.

Don Quixote and Sancho mounted again; with the same applause and music they reached their guide’s house, which was large and stately, in short, like a rich gentleman’s; where we will leave him for now, because Cide Hamete will have it so.