Chapter LXXI. Of what befell Don Quixote with his squire Sancho on the way to their village

The vanquished and much-harried Don Quixote went along exceedingly pensive on the one hand and very glad on the other. His sadness was caused by his defeat; and his gladness by thinking of Sancho’s virtue, as he had shown it in the resurrection of Altisidora, though it was with some misgiving that he persuaded himself the lovelorn damsel had really been dead. Sancho went along not at all glad, because it saddened him to see that Altisidora had not kept her word to give him the shifts; and, turning this over and over, he said to his master:

“Truly, sir, I must be the unluckiest doctor that’s to be found in the world, where there are physicians who, though they kill the sick man they’re treating, want to be paid for their work, which is nothing more than signing a little slip for some medicines, and it’s not even them that make them up but the apothecary, and there you have it, all signed and sealed; and me, when other people’s health costs me drops of blood, chucks under the chin, pinches, pinpricks, and lashes, they don’t give me an ardite. Well, I swear to them that if they bring any other sick person into my hands, before I cure him they’ll have to grease mine; for the abbot dines from what he sings, and I won’t believe heaven has given me the virtue I have so that I can share it with others for nothing, for free.”

“You are right, Sancho, my friend,” answered Don Quixote, “and Altisidora has done very ill in not giving you the shifts she promised; and though your virtue is gratis data (freely given), for it has cost you no study at all, to receive martyrdoms in your person is more than study. Of myself I can tell you that if you had wanted pay for the lashes for Dulcinea’s disenchantment, I would have given it to you already, and good pay too; but I do not know whether payment will go well with the cure, and I would not want the reward to hinder the medicine. For all that, it seems to me nothing will be lost in trying it: decide, Sancho, what you want, and whip yourself at once, and pay yourself in cash and with your own hand, since you have money of mine.”

At these offers Sancho opened his eyes and his ears a span wide, and in his heart consented to whip himself with a will; and he said to his master:

“Well, now, sir, I’m willing to get myself ready to give your grace what you want, with profit to myself; for the love of my children and my wife makes me show myself a man who looks to his own interest. Tell me, your grace: how much will you give me for each lash I give myself?”

“If I were to pay you, Sancho,” answered Don Quixote, “according to what the greatness and quality of this remedy deserve, the treasure of Venice and the mines of Potosí would be too little to pay you; take the measure yourself of what of mine you are carrying, and set the price on each lash.”

“They come,” answered Sancho, “to three thousand three hundred and some; of them I’ve given myself as many as five: the rest remain; let these five go in among the ‘some,’ and let’s come to the three thousand three hundred, which at a cuartillo apiece, and I wouldn’t take less if the whole world ordered me to, come to three thousand three hundred cuartillos, which, for the three thousand, are one thousand five hundred half reales, which make seven hundred and fifty reales; and the three hundred make one hundred and fifty half reales, which come to seventy-five reales, which, added to the seven hundred and fifty, are eight hundred and twenty-five reales in all. These I’ll deduct from what I have of your grace’s, and I’ll go into my house rich and happy, though well whipped; for you don’t catch trout…, and I’ll say no more.”

“O blessed Sancho! O lovable Sancho,” answered Don Quixote, “and how bound Dulcinea and I must remain to serve you all the days heaven grants us of life! If she returns to the being she has lost, as she cannot fail to, her ill luck will have turned out good luck, and my defeat the happiest of triumphs. And look, Sancho, when you wish to begin the discipline, for, to make you get it done quickly, I add a hundred reales.”

“When?” replied Sancho. “Tonight, without fail. Let your grace see to it that we spend it in the open, under the sky, for I’ll lay open my flesh.”

Night came, awaited by Don Quixote with the greatest longing in the world, for it seemed to him that the wheels of Apollo’s chariot had broken and that the day was drawing out longer than usual, just as happens to lovers, who never get the reckoning of their desires to come out right. At last they went in among some pleasant trees a little off the road, where, leaving empty the saddle and packsaddle of Rocinante and the gray, they stretched out on the green grass and had supper from Sancho’s stores; and he, making a mighty and supple whip of the gray’s halter and headstall, went off among some beeches about twenty paces from his master. Don Quixote, watching him go with such spirit and dash, said to him:

“Mind, my friend, that you do not cut yourself to pieces; let one lash wait for another; do not try to hurry so in the race that your breath fails you halfway through it; I mean, do not lay them on so hard that your life fails you before you reach the number desired. And so that you will not lose by a card too many or too few, I will stand apart and count on this rosary of mine the lashes you give yourself. May heaven favor you as your good intention deserves.”

“A good payer is not pained by pledges,” answered Sancho. “I mean to lay them on so that they hurt me without killing me; for that must be where the substance of this miracle lies.”

Then he stripped himself from the waist up, and, snatching up the cord, he began to lay on, and Don Quixote began to count the lashes.

Sancho must have given himself some six or eight when the jest seemed a heavy one to him and its price very cheap, and, stopping a little, he told his master that he had been cheated, because each of those lashes deserved to be paid at half a real, not a cuartillo.

“Go on, Sancho, my friend, and do not lose heart,” Don Quixote said to him, “for I double the stake of the price.”

“In that case,” said Sancho, “in God’s hands, then, and let the lashes rain!”

But the sly rogue stopped laying them on his back and laid them on the trees, with sighs now and then that seemed to tear his soul out with each one. Don Quixote’s soul being tender, and fearing that Sancho’s life might give out and that he would not attain his desire through Sancho’s imprudence, he said to him:

“On your life, my friend, let this business stop at this point, for this medicine seems to me very harsh, and it will be well to give time to time; for Zamora was not won in an hour. More than a thousand lashes, if I have not counted wrong, you have given yourself: they are enough for now; for the ass, to speak coarsely, bears the load, but not the overload.”

“No, no, sir,” answered Sancho, “it shall not be said of me: ‘Money paid, arms broken.’ Let your grace move off a little farther and let me give myself another thousand lashes at least, for with two more goes like this we’ll have settled this account, and still have cloth to spare.”

“Since you find yourself so well disposed,” said Don Quixote, “heaven help you; lay on, and I will move away.”

Sancho went back to his task with such spirit that he had already stripped the bark from many trees, such was the severity with which he whipped himself; and once, raising his voice and giving a beech an enormous lash, he said:

“Here you shall die, Sansón, and all who are with him!”

Don Quixote ran up at once at the sound of the pitiful voice and the blow of the harsh lash, and, seizing the twisted halter that served Sancho as a bullwhip, he said to him:

“Fortune forbid, Sancho, my friend, that for my pleasure you should lose your life, which must serve to support your wife and your children: let Dulcinea wait for a better occasion, for I will keep myself within the bounds of a hope close at hand, and will wait for you to gather new strength, so that this business may be concluded to everyone’s satisfaction.”

“Since your grace, my master, wants it so,” answered Sancho, “so be it, and welcome; and throw your cape over these shoulders of mine, for I’m sweating and wouldn’t want to catch a chill; for new flagellants run that danger.”

Don Quixote did so, and, left in his underclothes, he wrapped Sancho up, who slept until the sun woke him, and then they went on with their journey, which they brought to an end, for the time being, at a village that lay three leagues from there. They dismounted at a tavern, which Don Quixote recognized as such, and not as a castle with a deep moat, towers, portcullises, and drawbridge; for since they had vanquished him he reasoned with more judgment in all things, as will now be told. They lodged him in a room on the ground floor, which instead of embossed leather hangings had some old painted serge cloths, of the kind they use in villages. On one of them was painted, by a very bad hand, the rape of Helen, at the moment the daring guest bore her away from Menalao, and another showed the tale of Dido and Aeneas, with her up on a high tower, as though signaling with half a bedsheet to the fugitive guest, who was fleeing over the sea in a frigate or brigantine.

He noticed in the two stories that Helen was not going very unwillingly, because she was laughing on the sly and slyly; but the beautiful Dido was shown shedding tears the size of walnuts from her eyes. Seeing which, Don Quixote said:

“These two ladies were most unfortunate in not having been born in this age, and I above all unfortunate in not having been born in theirs: had I met these gentlemen, Troy would not have been burned nor Carthage destroyed, for merely by my killing Paris so many misfortunes would have been avoided.”

“I’ll wager,” said Sancho, “that before long there won’t be an eating house, inn, or tavern, or barber’s shop where the story of our deeds isn’t painted up. But I’d like it to be painted by the hands of a better painter than the one who painted these.”

“You are right, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “because this painter is like Orbaneja, a painter who lived in Úbeda; who, when they asked him what he was painting, would answer: ‘Whatever comes out’; and if by chance he painted a rooster, he would write under it: ‘This is a rooster,’ so they would not think it was a fox. That, it seems to me, Sancho, is how the painter or writer, for it is all one, must be who brought out the history of this new Don Quixote that has come out: he painted or wrote whatever came out; or he will have been like a poet who went about the court some years ago, named Mauleón, who would answer offhand whatever he was asked; and when someone asked him what Deum de Deo (God from God) meant, he answered: ‘Dé donde diere’ (Let it land where it lands). But, leaving this aside, tell me, Sancho, whether you mean to give yourself another round tonight, and whether you want it to be under a roof or in the open air.”

“By God, sir,” answered Sancho, “for what I mean to give myself, it’s all one to me whether it’s indoors or out in the fields; but, for all that, I’d like it to be among trees, for it seems they keep me company and help me bear my labor wonderfully.”

“Well, it is not to be so, Sancho, my friend,” answered Don Quixote, “but, so that you may gather strength, we must keep it for our village, which we shall reach the day after tomorrow at the latest.”

Sancho answered that he should do as he pleased, but that he would have liked to finish that business quickly, while the blood was hot and the millstone freshly dressed, because in delay danger often lies; and praying to God and swinging the mallet; and that one “take this” was worth more than two “I’ll give you,” and the bird in the hand more than the vulture on the wing.

“No more proverbs, Sancho, for the one God’s sake,” said Don Quixote, “for it seems you are going back to sicut erat (as it was); speak plainly, smoothly, without complications, as I have often told you, and you will see how it pays you back a hundred loaves for one.”

“I don’t know what bad luck this is of mine,” answered Sancho, “that I can’t say a word of reason without a proverb, or a proverb that doesn’t seem to me a reason; but I’ll mend my ways, if I can.”

And with this their conversation ended for the time being.