Chapter LXII. Which deals with the adventure of the enchanted head, with other childish things that cannot be left untold
Don Antonio Moreno was the name of Don Quixote’s host, a rich and discerning gentleman, fond of amusing himself in a decent and friendly way, who, having Don Quixote in his house, began looking for ways to bring his follies out into the open without harming him; for jests that hurt are no jests, and no pastime is worth having if it comes at a third party’s cost. The first thing he did was to have Don Quixote’s armor taken off and bring him out for all to see, in that tight, chamois-colored suit of his—as we have already described and depicted it at other times—onto a balcony overlooking one of the main streets of the city, in full view of the people and the boys, who stared at him as if he were a monkey. The men in liveries rode their courses before him again, as if they had put them on for him alone and not to brighten that festive day; and Sancho was delighted, because it seemed to him that he had found, without knowing how or why, another wedding of Camacho, another house like Don Diego de Miranda’s, and another castle like the duke’s.
That day some of his friends dined with Don Antonio, all of them honoring Don Quixote and treating him as a knight-errant, at which he was so puffed up and pompous that he could not contain himself for joy. Sancho’s witticisms were so many that all the servants of the house, and everyone who heard him, hung as it were upon his lips. While they were at table, Don Antonio said to Sancho:
“We have word here, good Sancho, that you are so fond of blancmange and little meatballs that, if any are left over, you keep them in your shirt for the next day.”
“No, sir, that’s not so,” answered Sancho, “because I’m more clean than greedy, and my master Don Quixote, who is here present, knows well that the two of us are used to getting through eight days on a handful of acorns or walnuts. True, if now and then it happens that they give me the heifer, I run with the halter; I mean that I eat what I’m given and take the times as I find them; and whoever said I’m a champion eater and not a clean one can take it from me that he’s wide of the mark; and I’d say this another way if I didn’t have respect for the honorable beards at this table.”
“To be sure,” said Don Quixote, “the frugality and cleanliness with which Sancho eats could be written down and engraved on plates of bronze, so as to stay in the eternal memory of the ages to come. True, when he is hungry he seems something of a glutton, because he eats fast and chews with both cheeks; but his cleanliness he always keeps in good order, and in the time he was a governor he learned to eat in a dainty fashion: so much so that he ate grapes, and even pomegranate seeds, with a fork.”
“What!” said Don Antonio. “Sancho has been a governor?”
“Yes,” answered Sancho, “and of an isle called Barataria. Ten days I governed it, as smooth as you could ask; in them I lost my peace of mind and learned to despise all the governments in the world; I came out of it running, fell into a cave where I gave myself up for dead, and got out of it alive by a miracle.”
Don Quixote told in detail the whole affair of Sancho’s government, which gave his hearers great pleasure.
When the cloth had been removed, Don Antonio took Don Quixote by the hand and went with him into a room set apart, where there was no other ornament than a table, of jasper by the look of it, which stood on a pedestal of the same, and on it was set, after the fashion of the busts of the Roman emperors, from the chest up, a head that seemed to be of bronze. Don Antonio walked with Don Quixote all about the room, going round the table many times, after which he said:
“Now, Señor Don Quixote, that I am assured no one is listening or overhearing us, and the door is shut, I wish to tell your grace of one of the rarest adventures, or, better said, novelties, that can be imagined, on condition that what I tell your grace must be laid away in the innermost closets of secrecy.”
“That I swear,” answered Don Quixote, “and I will even lay a slab on top of it, to make it safer; for I would have your grace know, Señor Don Antonio”—for he already knew his name—“that the man you are speaking to has ears for hearing but no tongue for speaking; and so your grace may safely transfer what is in your breast into mine, and reckon that you have flung it into the abysses of silence.”
“On the faith of that promise,” answered Don Antonio, “I mean to fill your grace with wonder at what you will see and hear, and to give myself some relief from the pain it causes me to have no one to share my secrets with, for they are not to be trusted to just anyone.”
Don Quixote waited in suspense to see where so many precautions were to end. At this, Don Antonio, taking his hand, ran it over the bronze head and over the whole table and over the jasper pedestal that held it up, and then he said:
“This head, Señor Don Quixote, was made and fashioned by one of the greatest enchanters and sorcerers the world has ever had, who was, I believe, a Pole by birth and a disciple of the famous Escotillo, of whom so many marvels are told; he stayed here in my house, and for the price of a thousand escudos that I gave him he wrought this head, which has the property and virtue of answering whatever is asked of it in its ear. He took bearings, drew characters, observed the stars, studied the points, and in the end brought it out with the perfection we shall see tomorrow, because on Fridays it is mute, and today, being Friday, it will make us wait until tomorrow. In the meantime your grace can prepare what you will wish to ask, for I know by experience that it tells the truth in all it answers.”
The head’s virtue and property left Don Quixote amazed, and he was on the point of not believing Don Antonio; but, seeing how little time there was before the trial would be made, he chose to say nothing to him except that he thanked him for having revealed so great a secret to him. They left the room, Don Antonio locked the door, and they went off to the hall where the other gentlemen were. In the meantime Sancho had told them many of the adventures and happenings that had befallen his master.
That afternoon they took Don Quixote out for a ride, not in armor but in street clothes, wearing a loose coat of tawny cloth that at that season could have made ice itself sweat. They arranged with their servants to keep Sancho amused in such a way that they would not let him leave the house. Don Quixote rode, not on Rocinante, but on a large, easy-paced mule, very handsomely fitted out. They put the coat on him, and on his back, without his seeing it, they sewed a parchment bearing, in large letters, the words “This is Don Quixote of La Mancha.” As soon as the ride began, the placard drew the eyes of all who came to see him, and as they read “This is Don Quixote of La Mancha,” Don Quixote was amazed to see that everyone who looked at him named him and knew him; and he turned to Don Antonio, riding beside him, and said:
“Great is the prerogative that knight-errantry holds within itself, since it makes the one who professes it known and famous in every corner of the earth; or if not, let your grace see, Señor Don Antonio, how even the boys of this city know me without ever having seen me.”
“So it is, Señor Don Quixote,” answered Don Antonio, “for just as fire cannot be hidden and shut away, virtue cannot fail to be known, and the virtue gained by the profession of arms shines and stands out above all the others.”
It happened, then, that as Don Quixote was going along amid the applause that has been described, a Castilian who read the placard on his back raised his voice, saying:
“The devil take you for a Don Quixote of La Mancha! How have you got this far without being killed by the countless beatings you carry on your back? You are mad, and if you were mad on your own and inside the doors of your madness it would not be so bad; but you have the property of turning everyone who deals and keeps company with you into madmen and dolts; if not, let people look at these gentlemen who are with you. Go home, you dolt, and look after your property, your wife, and your children, and leave off these empty things that are eating away your brain and skimming the cream off your understanding.”
“Brother,” said Don Antonio, “go your way, and do not give advice to those who do not ask you for it. Señor Don Quixote of La Mancha is very sane, and we who keep him company are no fools; virtue is to be honored wherever it is found; and go to the devil, and do not meddle where you are not wanted.”
“By God, your grace is right,” answered the Castilian, “for giving advice to this good man is kicking against the goad; but, for all that, it grieves me very much that the good wit they say this dolt has in all things should drain away down the gutter of his knight-errantry; and may the go-to-the-devil your grace spoke fall on me and on all my descendants if from this day on, though I should live longer than Methuselah, I give advice to anyone, even if he asks me for it.”
The adviser went off; the ride went on; but the boys and all the people were in such a rush to read the placard that Don Antonio had to take it off him, as though he were taking off something else.
Night came, and they went back to the house; there was a ball with ladies, because Don Antonio’s wife, who was a lady of quality, merry, beautiful, and sensible, had invited some of her friends to come and honor her guest and enjoy his never-seen follies. A number of them came, there was a splendid supper, and the ball began at almost ten o’clock at night. Among the ladies were two of a roguish taste and fond of jesting, and, though they were very virtuous, they were somewhat free in their ways, so as to let the jests give pleasure without giving offense. These two were in such a hurry to take Don Quixote out to dance that they wore him out, not only in body but in soul. It was a thing to see, the figure Don Quixote cut: long, stretched out, lean, sallow, tight in his clothes, ungainly, and above all not in the least light on his feet. The young ladies wooed him on the sly, and he, also on the sly, scorned them; but, finding himself hard pressed with their wooing, he raised his voice and said:
“Fugite, partes adversae! (Flee, you adverse powers!) Leave me in my peace, unwelcome thoughts. Settle matters with your desires yourselves, ladies, for she who reigns over mine, the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso, will not consent that any desires but hers should subdue and conquer me.”
And, saying this, he sat down on the floor in the middle of the hall, worn out and broken by so much dancing. Don Antonio had him carried bodily to his bed, and the first to lay hold of him was Sancho, saying to him:
“Bad luck to it, sir, our master, you’ve danced yourself into a fine fix! Do you think all brave men are dancers and all knights-errant high-steppers? I say that if you think so, you’re mistaken; there are men who’ll dare to kill a giant before they’ll cut a caper. If it were a matter of stamping and slapping your shoes, I’d make up for what you lack, for I can stamp like a gerfalcon; but when it comes to dancing, I can’t put in a stitch.”
With these and other remarks Sancho gave the people at the ball something to laugh at, and he put his master to bed, wrapping him up so that he would sweat out the chill of his dancing.
The next day Don Antonio thought it would be well to make the trial of the enchanted head, and with Don Quixote, Sancho, and two other friends, and the two ladies who had worn Don Quixote out at the ball, who had stayed with Don Antonio’s wife that same night, he shut himself up in the room where the head was. He told them of the property it had, charged them to keep the secret, and told them that this was the first day on which the virtue of the said enchanted head was to be tried; and except for Don Antonio’s two friends no other person knew the trick of the enchantment, and even they, if Don Antonio had not revealed it to his friends first, would also have fallen into the amazement into which the rest fell, nor could it have been otherwise: with such skill and design was it built.
The first to put his mouth to the head’s ear was Don Antonio himself, and he said to it in a low voice, but not so low that it was not heard by all:
“Tell me, head, by the virtue that is enclosed in you: what thoughts am I having now?”
And the head answered him, without moving its lips, in a clear and distinct voice, so that it was heard by all, these words:
“I do not judge of thoughts.”
Hearing which, they were all astounded, and the more so seeing that in the whole room, or around the table, there was no human being who could have answered.
“How many of us are here?” Don Antonio asked again.
And the answer was given in the same manner, softly:
“There are you and your wife, with two friends of yours and two friends of hers, and a famous knight whose name is Don Quixote of La Mancha, and a squire of his who goes by the name of Sancho Panza.”
Now there was marveling anew indeed, now indeed everyone’s hair stood on end from sheer fright! And Don Antonio, stepping back from the head, said:
“This is enough to give me to understand that I was not deceived by the man who sold you to me, O wise head, talking head, head that answers back, and marvelous head! Let someone else come up and ask it what he will.”
And as women are ordinarily hasty and eager to know things, the first to come up was one of the two friends of Don Antonio’s wife, and what she asked it was:
“Tell me, head, what shall I do to be very beautiful?”
And the answer given her was:
“Be very virtuous.”
“I ask you no more,” said the questioner.
Then her companion came up and said:
“Head, I would like to know if my husband loves me well or not.”
And they answered her:
“Look at the deeds he does for you, and you will see.”
The married woman stepped away, saying:
“That answer had no need of a question, because, in effect, the deeds a man does declare the will of the one who does them.”
Then one of Don Antonio’s two friends came up and asked it:
“Who am I?”
And the answer given was:
“You know.”
“That is not what I ask you,” replied the gentleman, “but for you to tell me whether you know me.”
“Yes, I know you,” they answered him, “for you are Don Pedro Noriz.”
“I wish to know no more, since this is enough to understand, O head, that you know everything.”
And as he stepped away, the other friend came up and asked it:
“Tell me, head, what desires has my son, my eldest and heir?”
“I have already said,” they answered him, “that I do not judge of desires; but for all that, I can tell you that the ones your son has are to bury you.”
“That’s it,” said the gentleman: “what I see with my eyes, I point out with my finger.”
And he asked no more. Don Antonio’s wife came up and said:
“I do not know, head, what to ask you; I should only like to know from you whether I shall enjoy a good husband for many years.”
And they answered her:
“Yes, you shall, because his health and his temperance in living promise many years of life, which many are apt to cut short by their intemperance.”
Then Don Quixote came up and said:
“Tell me, you who answer: was it truth or was it a dream, what I tell of having happened to me in the cave of Montesinos? Will the lashes of Sancho my squire be certain? Will the disenchantment of Dulcinea come to pass?”
“As to the cave,” they answered, “there is much to be said: it has something of everything; Sancho’s lashes will go slowly; the disenchantment of Dulcinea will be duly carried out.”
“I wish to know no more,” said Don Quixote, “for once I see Dulcinea disenchanted, I shall reckon that all the good fortune I could think to wish for has come to me at a stroke.”
The last questioner was Sancho, and what he asked was:
“By any chance, head, will I have another government? Will I get out of the tight squeeze of being a squire? Will I see my wife and my children again?”
To which they answered him:
“You shall govern in your own house; and if you go back to it, you shall see your wife and your children; and when you leave off serving, you shall leave off being a squire.”
“Good, by God!” said Sancho Panza. “I could have told myself that: the prophet Perogrullo couldn’t have said more.”
“Beast,” said Don Quixote, “what do you want them to answer you? Is it not enough that the answers this head has given fit what is asked of it?”
“Yes, it’s enough,” answered Sancho, “but I’d have liked it to explain itself more and tell me more.”
With this the questions and the answers came to an end, but not the amazement in which they were all left, except for Don Antonio’s two friends, who knew the secret. The secret Cide Hamete Benengeli chose to reveal at once, so as not to keep the world in suspense, believing that some sorcery and extraordinary mystery was enclosed in the said head; and so he says that Don Antonio Moreno, in imitation of another head he saw in Madrid, made by a maker of prints, made this one in his house, to amuse himself and astonish the ignorant; and the construction was of this sort: the top of the table was of wood, painted and varnished like jasper, and the pedestal it stood on was of the same, with four eagle’s claws coming out of it to bear the weight more firmly. The head, which looked like a medallion and figure of a Roman emperor, and was the color of bronze, was hollow throughout, and so, neither more nor less, was the top of the table, into which it was fitted so exactly that no sign of a joint could be seen. The pedestal of the table was likewise hollow, matching the throat and chest of the head, and all this led down to another room that lay beneath the room of the head. Through all this hollow of pedestal, table, throat, and chest of the said medallion and figure ran a tube of tin, very closely fitted, that no one could see. In the room below, which corresponded to the one above, the one who was to answer was stationed, with his mouth against that same tube, so that, as through a blowpipe, the voice went from above to below and from below to above, in words articulate and clear; and in this way it was impossible to detect the trick. A nephew of Don Antonio’s, a sharp and sensible student, was the answerer; and since he had been told by his lord uncle who would go in with him that day to the room of the head, it was easy for him to answer the first question promptly and precisely; the rest he answered by guesswork, and, being sensible, sensibly. And Cide Hamete says further that this marvelous machine lasted some ten or twelve days; but that, when it got about the city that Don Antonio had an enchanted head in his house that answered all who questioned it, he, fearing lest it reach the ears of the wakeful sentinels of our Faith, laid the matter before the lords inquisitors, who ordered him to take it apart and go no further with it, so that the ignorant common people would not be scandalized; but in the opinion of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza the head remained enchanted and a giver of answers, more to Don Quixote’s satisfaction than to Sancho’s.
The gentlemen of the city, to please Don Antonio and to entertain Don Quixote and give him room to bring out his absurdities, arranged to run a ring-tilting six days from then; which did not take place, for the reason that will be told further on. Don Quixote took a fancy to walk about the city plainly and on foot, fearing that, if he went on horseback, the boys would chase after him; and so he and Sancho, with two other servants Don Antonio gave him, went out for a walk.
It happened, then, that as they went along a street, Don Quixote raised his eyes and saw written over a door, in very large letters: “Books Printed Here”; at which he was much pleased, because until then he had never seen a printing house and wanted to know what one was like. He went in with all his retinue, and saw them pulling sheets in one place, correcting in another, setting type in this one, revising in that, and, in short, all the machinery that is to be seen in large printing houses. Don Quixote would go up to a case and ask what was being done there; the workmen would explain it to him; he would marvel and move on. Among others he came up to one man and asked him what it was he was doing. The workman answered him:
“Sir, this gentleman here”—and he showed him a man of very good figure and appearance and of some gravity—“has translated a Tuscan book into our Castilian tongue, and I am setting it in type to send it to press.”
“What is the title of the book?” asked Don Quixote.
To which the author answered:
“Sir, the book, in Tuscan, is called Le bagatele.”
“And what does le bagatele answer to in our Castilian?” asked Don Quixote.
“Le bagatele,” said the author, “is as if we said in Castilian the playthings; and though this book is humble in its name, it holds and encloses within itself very good and substantial things.”
“I,” said Don Quixote, “know something of Tuscan, and I pride myself on singing some stanzas of Ariosto. But tell me, your grace, my good sir, and I do not say this because I wish to examine your grace’s wit, but out of curiosity, nothing more: have you ever found the word piñata in your text?”
“Yes, many times,” answered the author.
“And how does your grace translate it into Castilian?” asked Don Quixote.
“How should I translate it,” replied the author, “except by saying pot?”
“Body of me,” said Don Quixote, “and how far advanced your grace is in the Tuscan tongue! I will lay a good wager that where the Tuscan says piache, your grace says in Castilian it pleases; and where it says più, you say more; and you render su as up and giù as down.”
“I do render them so, certainly,” said the author, “for those are their proper equivalents.”
“I would dare to swear,” said Don Quixote, “that your grace is not known in the world, which is always loath to reward flowering wits and praiseworthy labors. What talents are lost out there! What wits pushed into corners! What virtues held in contempt! But for all that, it seems to me that translating from one language into another, unless it is from the queens of languages, Greek and Latin, is like looking at Flemish tapestries from the wrong side: though the figures can be seen, they are full of threads that obscure them, and they are not seen with the smoothness and finish of the right side; and translating from easy languages argues neither wit nor eloquence, no more than it argues them in a man who transcribes or copies one paper from another. And I do not mean to infer from this that this exercise of translating is not praiseworthy; for a man might busy himself in other, worse things, and ones that would bring him less profit. Outside this reckoning stand the two famous translators: the one, Doctor Cristóbal de Figueroa, in his Pastor Fido, and the other, Don Juan de Jáurigui, in his Aminta, where they so happily put in doubt which one is the translation and which the original. But tell me, your grace: is this book being printed at your own expense, or have you already sold the privilege to some bookseller?”
“I am printing it at my own expense,” answered the author, “and with this first impression, which is to be of two thousand copies, I reckon on making a thousand ducats at the least; they will go at six reales apiece, before you can say hand me the straw.”
“Your grace has done your sums nicely!” answered Don Quixote. “It is plain that you do not know the ins and outs of the printers, and the understandings they have with one another; I promise you that when you find yourself loaded down with two thousand bodies of books, you will find your own body so battered that it will frighten you, and the more so if the book is a little off and not in the least spicy.”
“Well, what then?” said the author. “Would your grace have me give it to a bookseller, who will give me three maravedís for the privilege, and think he’s doing me a favor in giving them to me at that? It is not to win fame in the world that I print my books, for I am known in it already by my works: profit is what I want, for without it good fame is not worth a cuatrín.”
“God give your grace a lucky hand,” answered Don Quixote.
And he passed on to another case, where he saw they were correcting a sheet of a book entitled Light of the Soul; and, on seeing it, he said:
“Such books as this, though there are many of the sort, are the ones that should be printed, because the sinners going about these days are many, and countless lights are needed for so many who are in the dark.”
He passed on and saw that they were likewise correcting another book; and, when he asked its title, they answered that it was called Second Part of the Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha, composed by one so-and-so, a resident of Tordesillas.
“I have already heard of this book,” said Don Quixote, “and in truth and on my conscience I thought it had been burned by now and turned to dust for its impertinence; but its Saint Martin’s Day will come for it, as it does for every hog; for made-up histories are good and delightful just so far as they come near the truth or the likeness of it, and true ones are the better the truer they are.”
And, saying this, with signs of some vexation, he left the printing house. And that very day Don Antonio made plans to take him to visit the galleys lying off the beach, at which Sancho rejoiced greatly, since he had never seen any in his life. Don Antonio sent word to the commander of the galleys that he would bring his guest, the famous Don Quixote of La Mancha, to see them that afternoon, of whom the commander and all the people of the city had already heard; and what befell him in them will be told in the next chapter.