Chapter LXXIV. Of how Don Quixote fell ill, and of the will he made, and his death

Since human things are not eternal, but are always declining from their beginnings until they reach their final end, and the lives of men above all, and since Don Quixote’s had no privilege from heaven to stay its course, his end and close came when he least expected it; for, whether it was from the melancholy that seeing himself vanquished caused him, or whether by the disposition of heaven, which so ordained it, a fever took hold of him and kept him six days in bed, during which he was visited many times by the priest, the bachelor, and the barber, his friends, while Sancho Panza, his good squire, never left his bedside.

They, believing that it was grief at seeing himself vanquished and at not seeing his desire fulfilled in the freeing and disenchantment of Dulcinea that had him in that state, tried by every possible means to cheer him, the bachelor telling him to take heart and get up so as to begin their pastoral calling, for which he had already composed an eclogue that would put to shame every one Sanazaro ever composed, and that, with his own money, he had already bought two famous sheepdogs for the flock, the one named Barcino and the other Butrón, sold to him by a herdsman from Quintanar. But Don Quixote did not leave off his sadness for all this.

His friends called the doctor, who took his pulse and was not much pleased with it, and said that, just in case, he should attend to the health of his soul, because that of his body was in danger. Don Quixote heard it with a calm spirit, but not so his housekeeper, his niece, and his squire, who began to weep tenderly, as if they already had him dead before them. The doctor’s opinion was that melancholy and despondency were bringing him to his end. Don Quixote asked them to leave him alone, because he wished to sleep a little. They did so, and he slept at a stretch, as they say, for more than six hours; so long that the housekeeper and the niece thought he would never wake from that sleep. He woke at the end of that time, and, giving a loud cry, said:

“Blessed be almighty God, who has done me such great good! In short, his mercies have no limit, and the sins of men neither shorten nor hinder them.”

The niece listened closely to her uncle’s words, and they seemed to her more coherent than the ones he usually spoke, at least in that illness, and she asked him:

“What is it your grace is saying, sir? Is there something new? What mercies are these, or what sins of men?”

“The mercies, niece,” answered Don Quixote, “are those God has shown me at this instant, and my sins, as I said, do not hinder them. My judgment is free and clear now, without the murky shadows of ignorance that my bitter and constant reading of those detestable books of chivalry cast over it. Now I know their absurdities and their deceits, and my one regret is that this undeceiving comes so late, leaving me no time to make amends by reading others that are a light to the soul. I feel, niece, that I am at the point of death; I should like to meet it in such a way as to make it understood that my life was not so bad that I must leave a madman’s name behind me; for, though I have been one, I would not want to confirm this truth in my death. Call my good friends for me, my dear: the priest, the bachelor Sansón Carrasco, and Master Nicolás the barber, for I wish to make my confession and my will.”

But the niece was spared this errand by the entrance of the three. As soon as Don Quixote saw them, he said:

“Give me joy, good sirs, for Don Quixote of La Mancha I am no longer; I am Alonso Quixano, to whom my ways of living gave the name of the Good. Now I am the enemy of Amadís of Gaul and of the whole endless swarm of his line; now all the profane histories of knight-errantry are hateful to me; now I know my folly and the danger that reading them put me in; now, by the mercy of God, having learned my lesson on my own head, I abhor them.”

When the three heard him say this, they believed beyond doubt that some new madness had seized him. And Sansón said to him:

“Now, Señor Don Quixote, when we have news that the lady Dulcinea is disenchanted, your grace comes out with this? And now that we are on the very point of becoming shepherds, to spend our lives singing, like princes, your grace wants to turn hermit? Hush, on your life, come back to yourself, and leave off these stories.”

“Those stories up to now,” replied Don Quixote, “which have been true enough to my harm, my death, with the help of heaven, must turn to my profit. I feel, sirs, that I am dying, and fast; let jests be put aside, and bring me a confessor to confess me and a notary to make my will, for in straits like these a man must not trifle with his soul; and so I beg you, while the priest hears my confession, to go for the notary.”

They looked at one another, amazed at Don Quixote’s words, and, though in doubt, they chose to believe him; and one of the signs by which they guessed that he was dying was his having come back so easily from madness to sanity, because to the words already told he added many others so well spoken, so Christian, and so coherent, that they took away their doubt altogether and made them believe he was sane.

The priest had the people go out, and he stayed alone with him and heard his confession.

The bachelor went for the notary, and a little later came back with him and with Sancho Panza; and Sancho, who already knew from the bachelor’s news the state his master was in, finding the housekeeper and the niece in tears, began to pucker his face and shed tears. The confession was over, and the priest came out, saying:

“Truly he is dying, and truly he is sane, Alonso Quixano the Good; we may well go in so that he can make his will.”

This news gave a terrible push to the brimming eyes of the housekeeper, the niece, and Sancho Panza, his good squire, so that the tears burst from their eyes and a thousand deep sighs from their breasts; for, truly, as has been said before, whether Don Quixote was plain Alonso Quixano the Good or whether he was Don Quixote of La Mancha, he was always of a gentle nature and pleasant dealing, and for this he was well loved not only by the people of his house but by everyone who knew him.

The notary came in with the others, and when the heading of the will had been drawn up and Don Quixote had set his soul in order, with all the Christian formalities that are required, coming to the bequests, he said:

“Item, it is my will that, as to certain moneys that Sancho Panza, whom in my madness I made my squire, has in his keeping, since there have been between him and me certain accounts, and givings and takings, I wish no charge to be laid against him for them, nor any account asked of him; but if any is left over after he has paid himself what I owe him, the remainder shall be his, which will be very little, and much good may it do him; and if, as when I was mad I had a hand in giving him the government of the isle, I could now that I am sane give him that of a kingdom, I would give it to him, because the simplicity of his nature and the faithfulness of his dealing deserve it.”

And, turning to Sancho, he said to him:

“Forgive me, my friend, for the occasion I have given you of seeming as mad as I, by making you fall into the error I fell into, that there were and are knights-errant in the world.”

“Oh!” answered Sancho, weeping. “Don’t die, your grace, my master; take my advice instead and live many years, because the greatest madness a man can commit in this life is to let himself die, just like that, without anybody killing him or any hands finishing him off but those of melancholy. Look, don’t be lazy; get up out of that bed, and let’s go out to the fields dressed as shepherds, as we agreed: maybe behind some bush we’ll find the lady Doña Dulcinea disenchanted, as pretty as you could wish. If you’re dying of grief at being vanquished, put the blame on me, saying they knocked you down because I girthed Rocinante badly; besides, your grace will have seen in your books of chivalry that it’s an ordinary thing for knights to knock one another down, and the one who is vanquished today to be the victor tomorrow.”

“That is so,” said Sansón, “and the good Sancho Panza has the very truth of these cases.”

“Sirs,” said Don Quixote, “let us go gently, for there are no birds this year in last year’s nests: I was mad, and now I am sane; I was Don Quixote of La Mancha, and I am now, as I have said, Alonso Quixano the Good. May my repentance and my truthfulness restore me, with your graces, to the esteem in which you once held me, and let the notary go on.

“Item, I leave my whole estate, just as it stands, to Antonia Quixana, my niece, who is here present, after there has first been taken from the readiest part of it what is needed to carry out the bequests I have made; and the first payment to be made I wish to be the wages I owe for the time my housekeeper has served me, and twenty ducats more for a dress. I name as my executors the priest and the bachelor Sansón Carrasco, who are here present.

“Item, it is my will that if Antonia Quixana, my niece, should wish to marry, she marry a man of whom it has first been ascertained that he does not know what books of chivalry are; and in case it should be found that he does know, and my niece should still wish to marry him, and should marry him, she shall lose all that I have left her, which my executors may distribute in pious works as they see fit.

“Item, I beg the said gentlemen my executors that if good fortune should bring them to know the author who they say composed a history that goes about with the title Second Part of Don Quixote of La Mancha, they ask him on my behalf, as earnestly as can be, to forgive me for the occasion I gave him, without my intending it, of writing so many and such great absurdities as he writes in it, because I depart this life with a scruple of conscience at having given him cause to write them.”

With this he closed the will, and, a faint coming over him, he stretched out full length on the bed. They were all alarmed and hurried to help him, and in the three days he lived after the one on which he made his will, he fainted very often. The house was in an uproar; but for all that, the niece ate, the housekeeper drank toasts, and Sancho Panza made merry; for this business of inheriting something wipes out or tempers in the heir the memory of the grief the dead man might reasonably be expected to leave behind.

At last Don Quixote’s final day came, after he had received all the sacraments, and after he had cursed the books of chivalry with many forceful words. The notary was present, and he said that he had never read in any book of chivalry of any knight-errant dying in his bed so peacefully and so like a Christian as Don Quixote; who, amid the pity and the tears of those who were there, gave up his spirit: I mean to say that he died.

Seeing which, the priest asked the notary to give him a sworn statement that Alonso Quixano the Good, whom people commonly called Don Quixote of La Mancha, had departed this present life and died a natural death; and that he asked for this statement so as to take away from any other author than Cide Hamete Benengeli the occasion of falsely raising him from the dead and making endless histories of his exploits.

Such was the end of the Ingenious Hidalgo of La Mancha, whose village Cide Hamete would not name exactly, so as to let all the towns and villages of La Mancha contend among themselves to adopt him and claim him as their own, as the seven cities of Greece contended for Homer.

Left out here are the laments of Sancho, of Don Quixote’s niece, and of his housekeeper, and the new epitaphs on his tomb, though Sansón Carrasco wrote this one for it:

Here lies the hidalgo strong
who went so far in valor’s ways
that, as all men may plainly see,
death never triumphed, in the end,
over his life by his own death.
He held the whole world of small account;
he was the scarecrow and the bogey
of all the world, in such a season
that it was proof of his good fortune
to die in his right mind and live mad.

And the most prudent Cide Hamete said to his pen:

“Here you shall stay, hung from this rack and this brass wire, my quill, whether well cut or badly trimmed I do not know, and here you shall live long ages, unless presumptuous and miscreant historians take you down to profane you. But before they reach you, you may warn them, and tell them in the best way you can:

‘Hold, hold, you little caitiffs!
Let it be touched by none;
for this emprise, good king,
was kept in store for me.

For me alone was Don Quixote born, and I for him; he knew how to act, and I to write; we two alone are made for each other, in spite and to the sorrow of the sham Tordesillan writer who dared, or will dare, to write the deeds of my valiant knight with a coarse and badly trimmed ostrich quill, for it is no load for his shoulders nor any matter for his frozen wit; whom you will warn, if by chance you come to know him, to let the weary and already moldering bones of Don Quixote rest in the grave, and not try to carry him off, against all the laws of death, to Old Castile, making him come out of the tomb where really and truly he lies stretched at full length, unable to make a third journey or a new sally; for, to mock the many sallies made by so many knights-errant, the two he made are enough, so much to the liking and pleasure of the people who came to know of them, in these kingdoms as well as in foreign ones.’ And with this you will fulfill your Christian profession, giving good counsel to one who wishes you ill, and I shall remain content and proud at having been the first who ever fully enjoyed the fruit of his writings, as he wished; for my desire has been no other than to make men abhor the feigned and absurd histories of the books of chivalry, which, thanks to those of my true Don Quixote, are already stumbling, and are bound, without any doubt, to fall altogether. Farewell.”

The End