Chapter LXX. Which follows sixty-nine and deals with things that cannot be left out for the clarity of this history

That night Sancho slept on a truckle bed in the same room as Don Quixote, a thing he would have avoided if he could, because he knew well that his master would not let him sleep for questions and answers, and he was in no mood for much talking, because the pains of his recent martyrdom were still with him and would not leave his tongue free, and it would have suited him better to sleep alone in a hut than in that rich room in company. His fear proved so true and his suspicion so certain that his master had scarcely got into bed when he said:

“What do you think, Sancho, of what happened tonight? Great and mighty is the force of loveless disdain, as you have seen with your own eyes Altisidora dead, not by other arrows, nor by another sword, nor by any other instrument of war, nor by deadly poisons, but by the thought of the harshness and the disdain with which I have always treated her.”

“She could have died and welcome as much as she liked and however she liked,” answered Sancho, “and left me at home, since I never made her fall in love or scorned her in my life. I don’t know, nor can I think, how it can be that the health of Altisidora, a damsel more whimsical than sensible, should have anything to do, as I’ve said before, with the martyrdoms of Sancho Panza. Now I really do come to see clearly and distinctly that there are enchanters and enchantments in the world, from whom God deliver me, since I don’t know how to deliver myself; for all that, I beg your grace to let me sleep and not ask me any more, unless you want me to throw myself down out of a window.”

“Sleep, Sancho, my friend,” answered Don Quixote, “if the pinpricks and pinches you received, and the chucks under the chin you were given, will let you.”

“No pain,” replied Sancho, “came up to the insult of the chucks under the chin, for no other reason than that duennas gave them to me, confound them; and I beg your grace again to let me sleep, because sleep is the relief of miseries for those who bear them awake.”

“So be it,” said Don Quixote, “and God be with you.”

The two of them fell asleep, and in this time Cide Hamete, author of this great history, chose to write and give an account of what moved the duke and duchess to raise the edifice of the contrivance described. And he says that the bachelor Sansón Carrasco, not having forgotten the time when the Knight of the Mirrors was vanquished and overthrown by Don Quixote, which defeat and fall erased and undid all his designs, wished to try his hand again, hoping for a better outcome than the last; and so, learning from the page who had taken the letter and the present to Teresa Panza, Sancho’s wife, where Don Quixote was, he got himself new armor and a horse, and put the white moon on his shield, carrying it all on a mule led by a farmhand, and not by Tomé Cecial, his former squire, so that he would not be recognized by Sancho or by Don Quixote.

He arrived, then, at the castle, where the duke informed him of the road and course Don Quixote was following, meaning to take part in the Zaragoza jousts. He told him likewise of the jests he had played on him with the scheme for Dulcinea’s disenchantment, which was to be at the cost of Sancho’s rump. In short, he gave an account of the trick Sancho had played on his master, giving him to understand that Dulcinea was enchanted and transformed into a peasant girl, and of how the duchess his wife had given Sancho to understand that it was he who was deceived, because Dulcinea really was enchanted; at which the bachelor laughed and marveled not a little, considering Sancho’s sharpness and simplicity as well as the extreme of Don Quixote’s madness.

The duke asked him, if he found him, and whether he vanquished him or not, to come back by way of the castle and give him an account of the outcome. The bachelor did so; he set out in search of him, did not find him in Zaragoza, went on, and there befell him what has been told.

He came back by way of the duke’s castle and told him everything, with the conditions of the battle, and that Don Quixote was already on his way back to keep, like a good knight-errant, his word to retire to his village for a year, in which time it might be, said the bachelor, that he would be cured of his madness; for this was the intention that had moved him to make those transformations, since it was a pitiful thing that a hidalgo of such good understanding as Don Quixote should be mad. With this he took his leave of the duke and went back to his village, there to wait for Don Quixote, who was coming along behind him.

From this the duke took occasion to play that jest on him, so much did he enjoy the doings of Sancho and Don Quixote; and he had the roads near and far from the castle watched, on every side by which he imagined Don Quixote might come back, by many servants of his on foot and on horseback, so that they would bring him to the castle by force or by consent if they found him. They found him and sent word to the duke, who, already prepared in all he was to do, as soon as he had news of his arrival, ordered the torches and the lights of the courtyard lit and Altisidora placed on the catafalque, with all the trappings that have been told, so lifelike and so well done that between the truth and them there was very little difference.

And Cide Hamete says further that he holds the mockers to be as mad as the mocked, and that the duke and duchess were not two fingers’ breadth from looking like fools themselves, since they took such pains to make fools of two fools.

As for these two, the one sleeping soundly and the other keeping watch with his thoughts let loose, the day overtook them and with it the wish to get up; for idle feathers, whether vanquished or victor, never pleased Don Quixote.

Altisidora—in Don Quixote’s opinion, come back from death to life—following the humor of her lord and lady, crowned with the same garland she had worn on the catafalque, and dressed in a tunic of white taffeta strewn with gold flowers, with her hair loose down her back, and leaning on a staff of fine black ebony, came into Don Quixote’s room, and he, troubled and confused at the sight of her, shrank down and covered himself almost entirely with the sheets and coverlets of the bed, his tongue mute, unable to show her any courtesy at all. Altisidora sat down on a chair beside the head of his bed, and, after heaving a great sigh, said to him in a tender and faint voice:

“When women of rank and modest damsels trample on their honor and give their tongues leave to break through every impediment, making public the secrets their hearts hold, they find themselves in a narrow strait. I, Señor Don Quixote of La Mancha, am one of these, hard pressed, vanquished, and in love; but for all that, long-suffering and virtuous; so much so that, from being so very much so, my soul burst from my silence and I lost my life. Two days ago, with the thought of the harshness with which you have treated me,

O harder than marble to my complaints,

obdurate knight, I have been dead, or at least taken for dead by those who have seen me; and if it were not that Love, taking pity on me, placed my remedy in the martyrdoms of this good squire, there I would have stayed in the other world.”

“Love might just as well have placed them in my donkey’s,” said Sancho, “and I’d have thanked him for it. But tell me, my lady, so may heaven provide you with a softer lover than my master: what is it you saw in the other world? What is there in hell? For whoever dies in despair must of necessity end up there.”

“To tell you the truth,” answered Altisidora, “I can’t have died altogether, since I didn’t go into hell; for if I had gone in there, be that as it may, I couldn’t have got out of it even if I had wanted to. The truth is that I got as far as the gate, where about a dozen devils were playing at ball, all in breeches and doublets, with Walloon collars trimmed with points of Flemish lace, and with cuffs of the same, with four fingers’ breadth of arm showing, to make their hands look longer, in which they held rackets of fire; and what amazed me most was that what served them for balls was books, stuffed, it seemed, with wind and flock, a marvelous and novel thing; but this did not amaze me so much as seeing that, though it is natural with players for the winners to be glad and the losers to be sad, there in that game all of them were grumbling, all of them were snarling, and all of them were cursing one another.”

“That’s no wonder,” answered Sancho, “because devils, whether they play or don’t play, can never be content, whether they win or don’t win.”

“That must be so,” answered Altisidora, “but there’s another thing that also amazes me, I mean amazed me then, and it was that at the first volley no ball was left whole or fit to be used again; and so books new and old came thick and fast, which was a marvel to see. One of them, new, brand-new, and well bound, they gave such a flick that they knocked its guts out and scattered its leaves. One devil said to another: ‘See what book that is.’ And the devil answered him: ‘This is the Second Part of Don Quixote of La Mancha, not composed by Cide Hamete, its first author, but by an Aragonese, who says he is a native of Tordesillas.’ ‘Take it away from here,’ answered the other devil, ‘and put it down in the abysses of hell: let my eyes never see it again.’ ‘Is it so bad?’ answered the other. ‘So bad,’ replied the first, ‘that if I set out on purpose to make it worse myself, I couldn’t manage it.’ They went on with their game, batting other books about, and I, because I had heard Don Quixote named, whom I so adore and love, tried to keep this vision in my memory.”

“A vision it must have been, no doubt,” said Don Quixote, “because there is no other I in the world, and that history is already going about here from hand to hand, but it stops in none, because everyone kicks it away. I have not been troubled at hearing that I wander like a phantom body through the darkness of the abyss or through the brightness of the earth, because I am not the one that history deals with. If it should be good, faithful, and true, it will have centuries of life; but if it is bad, the road from its birth to its grave will not be very long.”

Altisidora was about to go on complaining of Don Quixote when Don Quixote said to her:

“Many times I have told you, lady, that it grieves me that you have set your thoughts on me, since from mine they can receive thanks rather than relief; I was born to be Dulcinea del Toboso’s, and the fates, if there were any, dedicated me to her; and to think that any other beauty is to take the place she holds in my soul is to think the impossible. This is undeceiving enough for you to withdraw within the bounds of your modesty, since no one can be bound to the impossible.”

Hearing which, Altisidora, making a show of being angry and upset, said to him:

“As the Lord lives, Don Salt Cod, soul of a brass mortar, date pit, more stubborn and hard than a peasant who is begged when he has his own quoit on the mark, if I go at you I’ll tear your eyes out! Do you think by any chance, Don Vanquished and Don Beaten-with-Sticks, that I died for you? Everything you have seen tonight was feigned; for I am not the woman to let the black of one fingernail ache for such camels as you, let alone die.”

“That I can well believe,” said Sancho, “for this business of lovers dying is a thing to laugh at: they may well say it, but as for doing it, let Judas believe it.”

While they were in this talk, the musician, singer, and poet who had sung the two stanzas already set down came in, and, making a deep bow to Don Quixote, said:

“Let your grace, sir knight, count and hold me among the number of your greatest servants, because I have been very devoted to you for many days, as much for your fame as for your exploits.”

Don Quixote answered him:

“Let your grace tell me who you are, so that my courtesy may answer to your merits.”

The young man answered that he was the musician and panegyrist of the night before.

“Certainly,” replied Don Quixote, “your grace has an extraordinary voice, but what you sang does not seem to me to have been much to the purpose; because what have the stanzas of Garcilaso to do with the death of this lady?”

“Let your grace not marvel at that,” answered the musician, “for among the unshorn poets of our age it is now the custom for each one to write as he pleases and steal from whom he pleases, whether it suits his purpose or not, and there is no foolishness they sing or write now that is not put down to poetic license.”

Don Quixote would have answered, but the duke and duchess hindered it by coming in to see him, and among them there passed a long and pleasant conversation, in which Sancho said so many witty things and so many sly ones that he left the duke and duchess amazed once again, as much at his simplicity as at his sharpness. Don Quixote begged them to give him leave to depart that same day, since for vanquished knights like himself a pigsty was a fitter dwelling than royal palaces. They gave it to him very willingly, and the duchess asked him whether Altisidora remained in his good graces. He answered her:

“My lady, let your ladyship know that all this damsel’s trouble comes from idleness, the remedy for which is honest and constant occupation. She has told me here that lace is worn in hell; and since she must know how to make it, let her never let it out of her hands, for while she is busy plying the bobbins, the image or images of what she loves will not go plying about in her imagination; and this is the truth, this is my opinion, and this is my counsel.”

“And mine,” added Sancho, “for I’ve never in my life seen a lacemaker who died of love; for damsels who are kept busy set their thoughts more on finishing their tasks than on thinking of their loves. I say it from my own case, for while I’m digging I don’t remember my better half; I mean my Teresa Panza, whom I love more than the lashes of my eyes.”

“You speak very well, Sancho,” said the duchess, “and I will see to it that my Altisidora is occupied from now on in doing some white needlework, which she knows how to do extremely well.”

“There is no need, my lady,” answered Altisidora, “to use that remedy, since the thought of the cruelties this stray miscreant has used on me will wipe him from my memory without any other device. And, with your greatness’s leave, I wish to take myself away from here, so as not to have before my eyes any longer, not so much his sorry figure as his ugly and abominable mug.”

“That seems to me,” said the duke, “like what is commonly said:

For the one who heaps on insults
is not far from pardoning.”

Altisidora made a show of wiping away her tears with a handkerchief, and, curtsying to her lord and lady, went out of the room.

“I wish you,” said Sancho, “poor damsel, I wish you, I say, bad luck, since you’ve had to deal with a soul of esparto grass and a heart of holm oak. On my faith, if you’d had to deal with me, another cock would have crowed for you!”

The conversation came to an end; Don Quixote dressed, dined with the duke and duchess, and set out that afternoon.