Chapter LXXIII. Of the omens Don Quixote met on entering his village, with other events that adorn and give credit to this great history

At the entrance to which, as Cide Hamete says, Don Quixote saw two boys quarreling on the village threshing floors, and one said to the other:

“Don’t wear yourself out, Periquillo, for you won’t see it in all the days of your life.”

Don Quixote heard it and said to Sancho:

“Do you not notice, my friend, what that boy has said: ‘you won’t see it in all the days of your life’?”

“Well, what does it matter,” answered Sancho, “if the boy said that?”

“What?” replied Don Quixote. “Do you not see that, applying those words to my intention, they mean that I am not to see Dulcinea again?”

Sancho wanted to answer him, when he was prevented by seeing a hare come fleeing across that open country, followed by many greyhounds and hunters, and it came, frightened, to take refuge and crouch under the gray’s feet. Sancho caught it safely in his hands and presented it to Don Quixote, who was saying:

“Malum signum! Malum signum! (A bad sign! A bad sign!) A hare flees, greyhounds chase it: Dulcinea does not appear!”

“Your grace is a strange one,” said Sancho. “Let’s suppose this hare is Dulcinea del Toboso and these greyhounds chasing her are the miscreant enchanters who changed her into a peasant girl: she flees, I catch her and put her in your grace’s power, and you hold her in your arms and pet her: what bad sign is this, or what bad omen can be taken from it?”

The two boys of the quarrel came up to see the hare, and Sancho asked one of them why they were quarreling. And he was answered by the one who had said “you won’t see it again in all your life” that he had taken a cage of crickets from the other boy, which he did not mean to give back to him in all his life. Sancho took four cuartos out of his pocket and gave them to the boy for the cage, and put it in Don Quixote’s hands, saying:

“There, sir, these omens are broken and smashed, and they have no more to do with our affairs, as I imagine, though I’m a fool, than last year’s clouds. And if I don’t remember wrong, I’ve heard the priest of our village say that it isn’t for Christian or sensible people to pay attention to these childish things; and your grace yourself told me so not long ago, giving me to understand that all those Christians who paid attention to omens were fools. And there’s no need to make much of this; let’s go on, rather, and go into our village.”

The hunters came up and asked for their hare, and Don Quixote gave it to them; they went on, and at the entrance to the village they came upon the priest and the bachelor Carrasco in a little meadow, saying their prayers. And it should be known that Sancho Panza had thrown over the gray and over the bundle of armor, to serve as a covering cloth, the buckram tunic painted with flames of fire that they had put on him in the duke’s castle the night Altisidora came back to herself. He had also fitted the pointed cap on the donkey’s head, which was the newest transformation and adornment with which an ass was ever seen in the world.

They were at once recognized by the priest and the bachelor, who came to them with open arms. Don Quixote dismounted and embraced them warmly; and the boys, who are lynxes there is no escaping, spied the donkey’s pointed cap and came running to see him, and they said to one another:

“Come on, boys, and you’ll see Sancho Panza’s donkey dressed finer than Mingo, and Don Quixote’s beast skinnier today than on the first day.”

At last, surrounded by boys and accompanied by the priest and the bachelor, they entered the village and went to Don Quixote’s house, and found at its door the housekeeper and his niece, whom the news of his coming had already reached. Neither more nor less had it been given to Teresa Panza, Sancho’s wife, who, disheveled and half dressed, leading Sanchica her daughter by the hand, came running to see her husband; and, seeing him not so well turned out as she thought a governor ought to be, she said to him:

“How is it you come like this, husband of mine? For it seems to me you come on foot and footsore, and look more like a man ungoverned than a governor.”

“Hush, Teresa,” answered Sancho, “for many times where there are pegs there’s no bacon; and let’s go home, for there you’ll hear wonders. I bring money, which is what matters, earned by my own wits and without harm to anybody.”

“You bring the money, my good husband,” said Teresa, “and let it be earned this way or that, for however you may have earned it, you won’t have started any new custom in the world.”

Sanchica hugged her father and asked him whether he was bringing her anything, for she had been waiting for him like rain in May; and, she taking hold of him by one side of his belt and his wife by the hand, and his daughter pulling the gray along, they went off to their house, leaving Don Quixote in his, in the charge of his niece and his housekeeper, and in the company of the priest and the bachelor.

Don Quixote, without regard for formalities or hours, that very moment drew aside alone with the bachelor and the priest, and in brief words told them of his defeat and of the obligation he had been left under of not leaving his village for a year, an obligation he intended to observe to the letter, without overstepping it by an atom, just as a knight-errant should, bound by the punctiliousness and order of knight-errantry; and that he had it in mind to turn shepherd that year and pass the time in the solitude of the fields, where with a loose rein he could give free course to his amorous thoughts, exercising himself in the pastoral and virtuous calling; and that he begged them, if they had not much to do and were not hindered by more important business, to be pleased to be his companions; for he would buy sheep and enough stock to give them the name of shepherds; and that he would have them know that the most important part of the business was done, because he had given them their names, which would fit them as if cast in a mold. The priest told him to say them. Don Quixote answered that he himself was to be called the shepherd Quixotiz; and the bachelor, the shepherd Carrascón; and the priest, the shepherd Curambro; and Sancho Panza, the shepherd Pancino.

They were all astounded to see Don Quixote’s new madness; but, so that he would not leave the village again on his chivalries, hoping that in that year he might be cured, they fell in with his new intention and approved his madness as sensible, offering themselves to him as companions in his calling.

“And what’s more,” said Sansón Carrasco, “as all the world knows by now, I am a most celebrated poet, and at every step I will compose pastoral verses, or courtly ones, or whatever suits my purpose best, so that we may amuse ourselves in those out-of-the-way places where we are to roam; and what is most needful, my friends, is that each of us choose the name of the shepherdess he means to celebrate in his verses, and that we leave no tree, however hard, on which he does not label and carve her name, as is the use and custom of enamored shepherds.”

“That is just the thing,” answered Don Quixote, “though I am free of looking for the name of a feigned shepherdess, for there is the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso, glory of these riverbanks, ornament of these meadows, mainstay of beauty, cream of all graces, and, in short, a subject on whom all praise may rest well, however hyperbolical it be.”

“That is true,” said the priest, “but we others will look about for some handy shepherdesses, and if they do not square with us, let them corner with us.”

To which Sansón Carrasco added:

“And if there are none, we will give them the names of the stamped and printed ones the world is full of: Phyllises, Amaryllises, Dianas, Fléridas, Galateas, and Belisardas; for since they sell them in the marketplaces, we can very well buy them and keep them as our own. If my lady, or, better said, my shepherdess, should by chance be called Ana, I will celebrate her under the name of Anarda; and if Francisca, I will call her Francenia; and if Lucía, Lucinda, for it all comes to the same; and Sancho Panza, if he is to join this brotherhood, may celebrate his wife Teresa Panza under the name of Teresaina.”

Don Quixote laughed at the application of the name, and the priest praised his virtuous and honorable resolution no end, and offered once more to keep him company whenever he had time to spare from attending to his necessary duties. With this they took their leave of him, and begged and advised him to take care of his health and treat himself to whatever was good.

As luck would have it, his niece and the housekeeper overheard the conversation of the three; and as soon as they had gone, both of them went in to Don Quixote, and the niece said to him:

“What is this, uncle? Now that we thought your grace was coming back to settle down in your house and lead a quiet and honorable life in it, do you want to get yourself into new labyrinths, turning yourself into

Little shepherd, you who come,
little shepherd, you who go?

Truly the barley stalk is too tough by now to make pipes of.”

To which the housekeeper added:

“And will your grace be able to bear the summer siestas out in the country, the winter night dews, the howling of the wolves? No, certainly not, for this is the calling and occupation of robust men, tanned and bred to such a ministry almost from their swaddling clothes and baby shawls. Why, if it’s to be bad either way, it’s better to be a knight-errant than a shepherd. Look, sir, take my advice, for I don’t give it on a full stomach of bread and wine, but fasting, and on top of the fifty years of age I have: stay in your house, look after your property, go often to confession, be good to the poor, and on my soul be it if it goes badly for you.”

“Hush, daughters,” Don Quixote answered them, “for I know well what is good for me. Take me to bed, for it seems to me I am not very well; and be sure that, whether I am a knight-errant now or a shepherd yet to go errant, I shall never fail to see to whatever you may need, as you will see by my deeds.”

And the good daughters—for so, no doubt, the housekeeper and the niece were—put him to bed, and there they fed him and pampered him all they could.