Chapter LXVII. Of the resolution Don Quixote made to become a shepherd and follow the country life while the year of his promise was passing, with other truly delightful and good events

If many thoughts wearied Don Quixote before he was overthrown, many more wearied him after his fall. He was in the shade of the tree, as has been said, and there, like flies to honey, thoughts came at him and stung him: some went to Dulcinea’s disenchantment and others to the life he was to lead in his enforced retirement. Sancho came up and praised to him the lackey Tosilos’s generous nature.

“Is it possible,” Don Quixote said to him, “that you still think, O Sancho, that that man is a real lackey? It seems it has slipped your mind that you saw Dulcinea turned and transformed into a peasant girl, and the Knight of the Mirrors into the bachelor Carrasco, all of them works of the enchanters who persecute me. But tell me now: did you ask this Tosilos you speak of what God has done with Altisidora: whether she has wept for my absence, or whether she has already left in the hands of oblivion the amorous thoughts that wearied her in my presence?”

“The thoughts I had,” answered Sancho, “weren’t the kind to leave me room for asking about silly things. Body of me, sir! Is your grace in a state now to go inquiring into other people’s thoughts, and especially love thoughts?”

“Look, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “there is a great difference between the works that are done out of love and those that are done out of gratitude. It may well be that a knight is not in love, but it cannot be, strictly speaking, that he is ungrateful. Altisidora loved me well, by all appearances; she gave me the three kerchiefs you know of, she wept at my departure, she cursed me, she reviled me, she complained, in spite of shame, in public: all signs that she adored me, for the rage of lovers is apt to end in curses. Hopes I had none to give her, nor any treasures to offer, because my hopes are pledged to Dulcinea, and what knights-errant have for treasure is, as with goblins, illusory and false, and I can give her only these remembrances I have of her, without prejudice, however, to those I have of Dulcinea, whom you wrong by your slackness in whipping yourself and chastising that flesh of yours, may I see it eaten by wolves, which prefers to save itself for the worms rather than for the remedy of that poor lady.”

“Sir,” answered Sancho, “if the truth is to be told, I can’t persuade myself that the lashes on my rump have anything to do with the disenchanting of the enchanted, which is as if we said: ‘If your head aches, rub ointment on your knees.’ At least I’ll dare to swear that in all the histories your grace has read that deal with knight-errantry you’ve never seen anybody disenchanted by lashes; but, just in case, I’ll give them to myself when I feel like it and time gives me the convenience to punish myself.”

“God grant it,” answered Don Quixote, “and may heaven give you grace to see and acknowledge the obligation that lies on you to help my lady, who is yours as well, since you are mine.”

They were going on their way in these talks when they came to the very spot and place where they had been trampled by the bulls. Don Quixote recognized it; he said to Sancho:

“This is the meadow where we came upon the gallant shepherdesses and handsome shepherds who wished to renew and imitate the pastoral Arcadia in it, a notion as novel as it was sensible, in imitation of which, if you think well of it, I should like, O Sancho, for us to turn shepherds, at least for the time I must spend in retirement. I will buy some sheep and all the other things needed for the pastoral calling, and, I calling myself the shepherd Quixotiz and you the shepherd Pancino, we shall roam the hills, the woods, and the meadows, singing here, lamenting there, drinking of the liquid crystal of the springs, or else of the clear brooks, or of the full-flowing rivers. The holm oaks will give us of their sweetest fruit with a most bountiful hand, the trunks of the hardest cork oaks a seat, the willows shade, the roses fragrance, the wide meadows carpets woven in a thousand colors, the clear pure air breath, the moon and the stars light, in spite of the darkness of the night, song delight, weeping joy, Apollo verses, love conceits, with which we may make ourselves eternal and famous, not only in the present ages but in those to come.”

“By God,” said Sancho, “that kind of life squares with me, and even corners with me; and what’s more, the bachelor Sansón Carrasco and Master Nicolás the barber will hardly have had a good look at it before they’ll want to follow it and turn shepherds with us; and God grant the priest doesn’t take it into his head to come into the sheepfold too, he’s so merry and fond of a good time.”

“You have spoken very well,” said Don Quixote; “and the bachelor Sansón Carrasco, if he joins the pastoral guild, as he will without a doubt, may call himself the shepherd Sansonino, or else the shepherd Carrascón; Nicolás the barber may call himself Miculoso, as long ago Boscán called himself Nemoroso; as for the priest, I do not know what name we shall give him, unless it is some derivative of his name, calling him the shepherd Curiambro. As for the shepherdesses whose lovers we are to be, we can pick their names as we would pears; and since my lady’s name fits a shepherdess as well as a princess, there is no reason to tire myself looking for another that would suit her better; you, Sancho, shall give yours whatever name you like.”

“I don’t intend,” answered Sancho, “to give her any other but Teresona, which will suit her fatness and her own name too, since she’s called Teresa; and what’s more, when I celebrate her in my verses I’ll be showing my chaste desires, since I don’t go looking for bread finer than wheat in other men’s houses. It won’t be right for the priest to have a shepherdess, so as to set a good example; and if the bachelor wants to have one, his soul in his palm.”

“God save us,” said Don Quixote, “and what a life we shall lead, Sancho, my friend! How many flageolets will reach our ears, how many Zamoran bagpipes, what tabors, and how many timbrels, and how many rebecs! And what if, among these different kinds of music, the albogues ring out! There almost all the pastoral instruments will be seen.”

“What are albogues,” asked Sancho, “for I’ve never heard them named nor seen them in all my life?”

“Albogues,” answered Don Quixote, “are plates of brass shaped like candlesticks which, struck one against the other on the hollow, empty side, make a sound that, if not very pleasant or harmonious, does not displease, and goes well with the rusticity of the bagpipe and the tabor; and this name albogues is Morisco, as are all those in our Castilian tongue that begin with al, namely: almohaza (currycomb), almorzar (to breakfast), alhombra (carpet), alguacil (constable), alhucema (lavender), almacén (storehouse), alcancía (money box), and others like them, which can be only a few more; and only three Morisco words in our language end in i, and they are borceguí (buskin), zaquizamí (garret), and maravedí. Alhelí (wallflower) and alfaquí (Muslim doctor of law), as much for their opening al as for the i they end in, are known to be Arabic. I have told you this in passing, because the chance of having named albogues brought it back to my memory; and it will help us greatly to make this calling perfect that I am something of a poet, as you know, and that the bachelor Sansón Carrasco is an extreme one. Of the priest I say nothing; but I will wager he must have his touches and trimmings of a poet; and that Master Nicolás has them too I do not doubt, because all barbers, or most of them, are guitar players and rhymesters. I will complain of absence; you will boast of being a steadfast lover; the shepherd Carrascón, of being scorned; and the priest Curiambro, of whatever serves his turn best; and so the thing will go on in a way that will leave nothing to be desired.”

To which Sancho answered:

“I’m so unlucky, sir, that I’m afraid the day won’t come when I see myself in such a calling. Oh, what polished spoons I’m going to make when I see myself a shepherd! What fried crumbs, what cream, what garlands, and what pastoral odds and ends, which, though they may not win me a name for being sensible, can’t fail to win me one for being ingenious! Sanchica my daughter will bring us our dinner at the fold. But look out! For she’s good-looking, and there are shepherds more sly than simple, and I wouldn’t want her to go for wool and come back shorn; and love and not-so-good desires are apt to go about in the fields as much as in the cities, and in shepherds’ huts as much as in royal palaces; and take away the cause, and you take away the sin; and eyes that don’t see make a heart that doesn’t break; and better a leap from the thicket than the pleas of good men.”

“No more proverbs, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “for any one of those you have said is enough to make your thought understood; and many times I have advised you not to be so lavish with proverbs and to hold yourself back in saying them; but it seems to me that it is preaching in the desert, and ‘my mother punishes me, and I go on spinning my tops.’”

“It seems to me,” answered Sancho, “that your grace is like what they say: ‘Said the frying pan to the kettle, “Get away from me, black-eyes.”’ You’re scolding me for saying proverbs, and your grace strings them two by two.”

“Look, Sancho,” answered Don Quixote, “I bring in proverbs to the purpose, and when I say them they fit like a ring on your finger; but you drag them in by the hair, so that you haul them rather than guide them; and if I remember rightly, I have told you before that proverbs are brief maxims drawn from the experience and speculation of our ancient sages; and a proverb that is not to the purpose is nonsense rather than a maxim. But let us leave this, and, since night is coming on, let us draw off the highway some distance, where we will spend this night, and God knows what tomorrow will bring.”

They drew off, and supped late and poorly, much against Sancho’s will, who had before his mind the hardships of knight-errantry as practiced in the woods and the hills, even if now and then abundance showed itself in castles and houses, such as Don Diego de Miranda’s, as well as at Camacho the Rich’s wedding and in Don Antonio Moreno’s house; but he considered that it could not always be day nor always night, and so he spent that one sleeping, and his master keeping watch.