Don Quixote [Trans. by Edith Grossman] (42 page)

“Whoever she may be,” responded Don Quixote, “I shall do what I am obliged to do and what my conscience dictates, in accordance with the order I have professed.”

And turning to the damsel, he said:

“Let thy great beauty arise, for I grant whatever boon thou asketh of me.”

“Then what I ask,” said the damsel, “is that thy magnanimous person cometh with me wheresoever I shall lead thee, and maketh a vow that thou wilt not engage in any other adventure or respond to any other request until thou hast taken revenge for my sake upon a traitor who, counter to all divine and human law, hath usurped my kingdom.”

“I say that I do grant it in this wise,” responded Don Quixote, “and therefore thou mayest, Señora, from this day forth, cast off the melancholy that afflicts thee and let thy faint hope take on new vigor and strength; for, with the help of God and this my arm, thou wilt soon see
thyself restored to thy kingdom and seated on the throne of thy great and ancient state, in spite of and despite the base cowards who wisheth to deny it to thee. And now, to work, for they sayeth that in delay there lieth danger.”

The aggrieved maiden struggled insistently to kiss his hands, but Don Quixote, a discreet and courteous knight in all things, would not consent; instead, he helped her to her feet and embraced her with great courtesy and discretion and ordered Sancho to tighten Rocinante’s cinches and arm him immediately. Sancho took down the armor, which hung, like a trophy, from a tree, and, after tightening the cinches, he quickly armed his master, who, when he saw himself armed, said:

“Let us leave here, in the name of God, to succor this great lady.”

The barber was still on his knees, being very careful to conceal his laughter and to keep his beard from falling off, for if it fell, perhaps they would all fail to achieve their good intentions; and seeing that the boon had been granted, and that Don Quixote was preparing diligently to fulfill it, he rose and took his lady by the other hand, and the two of them lifted her onto the mule. Then Don Quixote mounted Rocinante, and the barber settled onto his animal, and Sancho was left to go on foot, feeling again the loss of his gray, which he needed so much now; but he bore everything with good humor, because it seemed to him that now his master was well on his way and very close to being an emperor, for without a doubt he thought he would marry the princess and become, at the very least, king of Micomicón. The only thing he regretted was the thought that the kingdom was in a country of blacks, and the people who would be given to him as vassals would all be blacks; then, in his imagination, he found a good remedy for this, saying to himself:

“What difference does it make to me if my vassals are blacks? All I have to do is put them on a ship and bring them to Spain, where I can sell them, and I’ll be paid for them in cash, and with that money I’ll be able to buy some title or office and live on that for the rest of my life. No flies on me! Who says I don’t have the wit or ability to arrange things and sell thirty or ten thousand vassals in the wink of an eye? By God, I’ll sell them all, large or small, it’s all the same to me, and no matter how black they are, I’ll turn them white and yellow.
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Bring them on, then, I’m no fool!”

This made him so eager and happy that he forgot about his sorrow at having to walk.

Cardenio and the priest watched all of this through some brambles, and they did not know what pretext they could use to join the others, but the priest, who was a great plotter, thought immediately of what they could do to achieve their desire, and with a pair of scissors he carried with him in a case, he quickly cut off Cardenio’s beard, and dressed him in his gray jacket, and gave him his short black cape, while he was left wearing doublet and breeches, and Cardenio’s appearance was so changed from what it had been before that he would not have recognized himself if he had looked in a mirror. When this had been done, although the others had already moved on while they were disguising themselves, they easily reached the king’s highway before them, because the thickets and rough terrain in those places makes travel more difficult for those on horseback than for those on foot. In fact, they positioned themselves on the plain at the entrance to the sierra, and as soon as Don Quixote and his companions emerged, the priest began to stare at him, showing signs that he recognized him, and after looking at him for a long time, he went toward him, his arms opened wide, and called out:

“Well met, O paragon of chivalry, my good compatriot Don Quixote of La Mancha, flower of gallantry, protector and defender of the weak, quintessence of knight errantry.”

And saying this, he threw his arms around the left knee of Don Quixote, who was stunned at what he saw and heard the man saying and doing and began to look at him carefully; at last he recognized him, and was astonished to see him, and made a great effort to dismount, but the priest would not allow it, for which reason Don Quixote said:

“Your grace, Señor Licentiate, permit me to dismount, for it is not right that I remain on horseback while a reverend person like your grace goes on foot.”

“Under no circumstances shall I agree to that,” said the priest. “Let your magnificence stay on your horse, for on horseback you perform the greatest deeds and have the greatest adventures that our age has witnessed; as for me, I am only an unworthy priest, and it will be enough for me to climb on the haunches of one of these mules and ride behind one of these gentlefolk traveling with your grace, if they do not consider that an inconvenience. And I shall imagine that I am mounted on Pegasus, or on the zebra or immense horse ridden by that famous Moor Muzaraque, who even now lies enchanted on the slopes of the great Zulema, not far from great Complutum.”
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“That did not occur to me, Señor Licentiate,” responded Don Quixote, “but I know that my lady the princess is willing, for my sake, to order her squire to give up the saddle on his mule to your grace; he can ride on the haunches, if the animal can carry you both.”

“It can, as far as I know,” responded the princess, “and I also know it will not be necessary to give any orders to my gentle squire, for he is so courteous and courtly that he will not agree to an ecclesiastical person traveling on foot when he can ride.”

“That is true,” responded the barber.

And dismounting immediately, he invited the priest to sit on the saddle, and he did so without having to be begged. Unfortunately, when the barber climbed onto its haunches, the mule, which in fact had been hired, which is enough to indicate how bad it was, raised its hindquarters a little and gave two kicks into the air, and if they had landed on Master Nicolás’s chest or his head, he would have cursed the day he came after Don Quixote. As it was, they startled him so much that he fell to the ground, paying so little attention to his beard that it fell to the ground as well, and when he found himself without it, all he could do was cover his face with both hands and complain that his teeth had been broken. Don Quixote, when he saw that great clump of beard with no jaw, and no blood, lying far from the face of the fallen squire, said:

“As God lives, what a great miracle this is! His beard has been ripped and torn from his face as if it had been done intentionally!”

The priest, who saw the risk of his deception being discovered, ran to the beard and carried it to where Master Nicolás was still lying on the ground and crying out, and at one stroke he pulled the barber’s head down to his chest and put the beard back on, murmuring some words over him, which he said was a special incantation for reattaching beards, as they would soon see; when he had replaced the beard he moved away, and the squire was as well-bearded and undamaged as before; this left Don Quixote dumbfounded, and he asked the priest to teach him the incantation when he had time, because he believed its virtue had to go beyond simply reattaching beards, for it was clear that when the beard was torn off, the skin where it had been attached had to be badly wounded, and since the incantation had cured everything, it was of benefit to more than just beards.

“That is true,” said the priest, and he promised to teach it to him at the first opportunity.

They agreed that the priest would mount the mule for the moment, and the three of them would take turns riding until they reached the inn, which was some two leagues away. With three of them riding—that is
Don Quixote, the princess, and the priest—and three of them walking—to wit, Cardenio, the barber, and Sancho Panza—Don Quixote said to the damsel:

“Your highness, Señora, lead us wherever you please.”

And before she could respond, the licentiate said:

“Toward which kingdom does Your Majesty wish to go? Is it by chance Micomicón? It must be, or I know little of kingdoms.”

She was very sharp-witted and understood what her answer had to be, and so she said:

“Yes, Señor: I am going to that kingdom.”

“If that is true,” said the priest, “we have to pass through the center of my village, and from there your grace will take the road to Cartagena, where, with good fortune, you can embark, and if there is a favorable wind, a calm sea, and no storms, in a little less than nine years you can be in sight of the great Meona,
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I mean, Meótides Lagoon, which is a little more than one hundred days’ travel from Your Majesty’s kingdom.”

“Your grace is mistaken, Señor,” she said, “because I left there less than two years ago, and the truth is I never had good weather, and despite all this I have succeeded in seeing the one I longed to see, which is to say, Señor Don Quixote of La Mancha, news of whom reached my ears as soon as I set foot in Spain, moving me to seek him in order to commend myself to his courtesy, and entrust my just cause to the valor of his invincible arm.”

“No more: let my praises cease,” Don Quixote said then, “because I am the enemy of any kind of flattery, and even if this is not flattery, such talk offends my chaste ears. What I can say, my lady, is that whether or not I possess valor, whatever valor I do or do not possess will be used in your service until the end of my life; leaving this aside for the moment, I beg your grace, Señor Licentiate, to tell me the reason that has brought you to this place, alone, and so lacking in servants, and so lightly clad that it astounds me.”

“I shall reply to that briefly,” responded the priest, “because your grace must know, Señor Don Quixote, that I and Master Nicolás, our friend and barber, were going to Sevilla to collect a certain sum of money that a kinsman of mine who went to the Indies many years ago had sent to me, no small sum since it amounts to more than sixty thousand assayed
pesos,
which are worth twice as much as ordinary ones; yesterday,
as we were traveling through this area, four highwaymen assaulted us and took everything, even our beards; because of that, it suited the barber to put on a false one, and even this young man here”—and he pointed at Cardenio—“they transformed completely. Strangely enough, it is common knowledge all around this area that the men who assaulted us were galley slaves freed, they say, in this very spot, by a man so brave that despite the commissary and the guards, he released them all; there can be no doubt that he was out of his mind, or as great a villain as they, or a man without soul or conscience, for he wanted to set the wolf loose in the midst of the sheep, the fox in the midst of the chickens, the fly in the midst of the honey: he wanted to defraud justice and oppose his king and natural lord, for he opposed his just commands. As I say, he wanted to deprive the galleys of their oars and throw the Holy Brotherhood, which had been at peace for many years, into an uproar; in short, he has committed an act by means of which one loses one’s soul and does little good for one’s body.”

Sancho had told the priest and the barber about the adventure of the galley slaves, which his master had concluded so gloriously, and for this reason the priest was very harsh when he referred to it in order to see what Don Quixote would do or say; he changed color at each word and did not dare say that he had been the liberator of those good people.

“These men, then,” said the priest, “were the ones who robbed us. May God in His mercy pardon the man who did not allow them to be taken to the punishment they deserved.”

CHAPTER XXX

No sooner had the priest finished speaking than Sancho said:

“Well, by my faith, Señor Licentiate, the man who did that deed was my master, and don’t think I didn’t tell him beforehand, and warn him to be careful about what he was doing, and say it was a sin to free them since all of them were there because they were great villains.”

“Imbecile,” said Don Quixote, “it is not the responsibility or concern of a knight errant to determine if the afflicted, the fettered, and the oppressed whom he meets along the road are in that condition and suffering that anguish because of misdeeds or kind acts. His only obligation is to help them because they are in need, turning his eyes to their suffering and not their wickedness. And I encountered a rosary, a string of disheartened, unfortunate people, and I did for them what my religion
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asks of me; the rest does not concern me, and I say that whoever thinks this is wrong, excepting the holy dignity of the licentiate and his honored person, knows little of the matter of chivalry, and lies like a lowborn whoreson, and will be taught this by my sword at greater length.”

And as he said this, he thrust his feet firmly into the stirrups and set his simple morion helmet firmly on his head, because the barber’s basin, which to his mind was the helmet of Mambrino, hung from the forebow of his saddle, waiting for the damage it had received at the hands of the galley slaves to be repaired.

Dorotea, who was quick-witted and very spirited, knew that Don Quixote’s reason was impaired and that everyone mocked and deceived him except Sancho Panza; she did not wish to do any less, and seeing him so angry, she said: