บทที่ บทที่ 62 · WHEREIN IS RELATED THE CRAFTY DEVICE SANCHO ADOPTED TO ENCHANT THE LADY DULCINEA, AND OTHER INCIDENTS AS LUDICROUS AS THEY ARE T

. WHEREIN IS RELATED THE CRAFTY DEVICE SANCHO ADOPTED TO ENCHANT THE LADY DULCINEA, AND OTHER INCIDENTS AS LUDICROUS AS THEY ARE TRUE

CHAPTER X.

WHEREIN IS RELATED THE CRAFTY DEVICE SANCHO ADOPTED TO ENCHANT THE LADY

DULCINEA, AND OTHER INCIDENTS AS LUDICROUS AS THEY ARE TRUE

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When the author of this great history comes to relate what is set down

in this chapter he says he would have preferred to pass it over in

silence, fearing it would not be believed, because here Don Quixote’s

madness reaches the confines of the greatest that can be conceived, and

even goes a couple of bowshots beyond the greatest. But after all,

though still under the same fear and apprehension, he has recorded it

without adding to the story or leaving out a particle of the truth, and

entirely disregarding the charges of falsehood that might be brought

against him; and he was right, for the truth may run fine but will not

break, and always rises above falsehood as oil above water; and so,

going on with his story, he says that as soon as Don Quixote had

ensconced himself in the forest, oak grove, or wood near El Toboso, he

bade Sancho return to the city, and not come into his presence again

without having first spoken on his behalf to his lady, and begged of

her that it might be her good pleasure to permit herself to be seen by

her enslaved knight, and deign to bestow her blessing upon him, so that

he might thereby hope for a happy issue in all his encounters and

difficult enterprises. Sancho undertook to execute the task according

to the instructions, and to bring back an answer as good as the one he

brought back before.

“Go, my son,” said Don Quixote, “and be not dazed when thou findest

thyself exposed to the light of that sun of beauty thou art going to

seek. Happy thou, above all the squires in the world! Bear in mind, and

let it not escape thy memory, how she receives thee; if she changes

colour while thou art giving her my message; if she is agitated and

disturbed at hearing my name; if she cannot rest upon her cushion,

shouldst thou haply find her seated in the sumptuous state chamber

proper to her rank; and should she be standing, observe if she poises

herself now on one foot, now on the other; if she repeats two or three

times the reply she gives thee; if she passes from gentleness to

austerity, from asperity to tenderness; if she raises her hand to

smooth her hair though it be not disarranged. In short, my son, observe

all her actions and motions, for if thou wilt report them to me as they

were, I will gather what she hides in the recesses of her heart as

regards my love; for I would have thee know, Sancho, if thou knowest it

not, that with lovers the outward actions and motions they give way to

when their loves are in question are the faithful messengers that carry

the news of what is going on in the depths of their hearts. Go, my

friend, may better fortune than mine attend thee, and bring thee a

happier issue than that which I await in dread in this dreary

solitude.”

“I will go and return quickly,” said Sancho; “cheer up that little

heart of yours, master mine, for at the present moment you seem to have

got one no bigger than a hazel nut; remember what they say, that a

stout heart breaks bad luck, and that where there are no fletches there

are no pegs; and moreover they say, the hare jumps up where it’s not

looked for. I say this because, if we could not find my lady’s palaces

or castles to-night, now that it is daylight I count upon finding them

when I least expect it, and once found, leave it to me to manage her.”

“Verily, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “thou dost always bring in thy

proverbs happily, whatever we deal with; may God give me better luck in

what I am anxious about.”

With this, Sancho wheeled about and gave Dapple the stick, and Don

Quixote remained behind, seated on his horse, resting in his stirrups

and leaning on the end of his lance, filled with sad and troubled

forebodings; and there we will leave him, and accompany Sancho, who

went off no less serious and troubled than he left his master; so much

so, that as soon as he had got out of the thicket, and looking round

saw that Don Quixote was not within sight, he dismounted from his ass,

and seating himself at the foot of a tree began to commune with

himself, saying, “Now, brother Sancho, let us know where your worship

is going. Are you going to look for some ass that has been lost? Not at

all. Then what are you going to look for? I am going to look for a

princess, that’s all; and in her for the sun of beauty and the whole

heaven at once. And where do you expect to find all this, Sancho?

Where? Why, in the great city of El Toboso. Well, and for whom are you

going to look for her? For the famous knight Don Quixote of La Mancha,

who rights wrongs, gives food to those who thirst and drink to the

hungry. That’s all very well, but do you know her house, Sancho? My

master says it will be some royal palace or grand castle. And have you

ever seen her by any chance? Neither I nor my master ever saw her. And

does it strike you that it would be just and right if the El Toboso

people, finding out that you were here with the intention of going to

tamper with their princesses and trouble their ladies, were to come and

cudgel your ribs, and not leave a whole bone in you? They would,

indeed, have very good reason, if they did not see that I am under

orders, and that ‘you are a messenger, my friend, no blame belongs to

you.’ Don’t you trust to that, Sancho, for the Manchegan folk are as

hot-tempered as they are honest, and won’t put up with liberties from

anybody. By the Lord, if they get scent of you, it will be worse for

you, I promise you. Be off, you scoundrel! Let the bolt fall. Why

should I go looking for three feet on a cat, to please another man; and

what is more, when looking for Dulcinea will be looking for Marica in

Ravena, or the bachelor in Salamanca? The devil, the devil and nobody

else, has mixed me up in this business!”

Such was the soliloquy Sancho held with himself, and all the conclusion

he could come to was to say to himself again, “Well, there’s remedy for

everything except death, under whose yoke we have all to pass, whether

we like it or not, when life’s finished. I have seen by a thousand

signs that this master of mine is a madman fit to be tied, and for that

matter, I too, am not behind him; for I’m a greater fool than he is

when I follow him and serve him, if there’s any truth in the proverb

that says, ‘Tell me what company thou keepest, and I’ll tell thee what

thou art,’ or in that other, ‘Not with whom thou art bred, but with

whom thou art fed.’ Well then, if he be mad, as he is, and with a

madness that mostly takes one thing for another, and white for black,

and black for white, as was seen when he said the windmills were

giants, and the monks’ mules dromedaries, flocks of sheep armies of

enemies, and much more to the same tune, it will not be very hard to

make him believe that some country girl, the first I come across here,

is the lady Dulcinea; and if he does not believe it, I’ll swear it; and

if he should swear, I’ll swear again; and if he persists I’ll persist

still more, so as, come what may, to have my quoit always over the peg.

Maybe, by holding out in this way, I may put a stop to his sending me

on messages of this kind another time; or maybe he will think, as I

suspect he will, that one of those wicked enchanters, who he says have

a spite against him, has changed her form for the sake of doing him an

ill turn and injuring him.”

With this reflection Sancho made his mind easy, counting the business

as good as settled, and stayed there till the afternoon so as to make

Don Quixote think he had time enough to go to El Toboso and return; and

things turned out so luckily for him that as he got up to mount Dapple,

he spied, coming from El Toboso towards the spot where he stood, three

peasant girls on three colts, or fillies—for the author does not make

the point clear, though it is more likely they were she-asses, the

usual mount with village girls; but as it is of no great consequence,

we need not stop to prove it.

To be brief, the instant Sancho saw the peasant girls, he returned full

speed to seek his master, and found him sighing and uttering a thousand

passionate lamentations. When Don Quixote saw him he exclaimed, “What

news, Sancho, my friend? Am I to mark this day with a white stone or a

black?”

“Your worship,” replied Sancho, “had better mark it with ruddle, like

the inscriptions on the walls of class rooms, that those who see it may

see it plain.”

“Then thou bringest good news,” said Don Quixote.

“So good,” replied Sancho, “that your worship has only to spur

Rocinante and get out into the open field to see the lady Dulcinea del

Toboso, who, with two others, damsels of hers, is coming to see your

worship.”

“Holy God! what art thou saying, Sancho, my friend?” exclaimed Don

Quixote. “Take care thou art not deceiving me, or seeking by false joy

to cheer my real sadness.”

“What could I get by deceiving your worship,” returned Sancho,

“especially when it will so soon be shown whether I tell the truth or

not? Come, señor, push on, and you will see the princess our mistress

coming, robed and adorned—in fact, like what she is. Her damsels and

she are all one glow of gold, all bunches of pearls, all diamonds, all

rubies, all cloth of brocade of more than ten borders; with their hair

loose on their shoulders like so many sunbeams playing with the wind;

and moreover, they come mounted on three piebald cackneys, the finest

sight ever you saw.”

“Hackneys, you mean, Sancho,” said Don Quixote.

“There is not much difference between cackneys and hackneys,” said

Sancho; “but no matter what they come on, there they are, the finest

ladies one could wish for, especially my lady the princess Dulcinea,

who staggers one’s senses.”

“Let us go, Sancho, my son,” said Don Quixote, “and in guerdon of this

news, as unexpected as it is good, I bestow upon thee the best spoil I

shall win in the first adventure I may have; or if that does not

satisfy thee, I promise thee the foals I shall have this year from my

three mares that thou knowest are in foal on our village common.”

“I’ll take the foals,” said Sancho; “for it is not quite certain that

the spoils of the first adventure will be good ones.”

By this time they had cleared the wood, and saw the three village

lasses close at hand. Don Quixote looked all along the road to El

Toboso, and as he could see nobody except the three peasant girls, he

was completely puzzled, and asked Sancho if it was outside the city he

had left them.

“How outside the city?” returned Sancho. “Are your worship’s eyes in

the back of your head, that you can’t see that they are these who are

coming here, shining like the very sun at noonday?”

“I see nothing, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “but three country girls on

three jackasses.”

“Now, may God deliver me from the devil!” said Sancho, “and can it be

that your worship takes three hackneys—or whatever they’re called—as

white as the driven snow, for jackasses? By the Lord, I could tear my

beard if that was the case!”

“Well, I can only say, Sancho, my friend,” said Don Quixote, “that it

is as plain they are jackasses—or jennyasses—as that I am Don Quixote,

and thou Sancho Panza: at any rate, they seem to me to be so.”

“Hush, señor,” said Sancho, “don’t talk that way, but open your eyes,

and come and pay your respects to the lady of your thoughts, who is

close upon us now;” and with these words he advanced to receive the

three village lasses, and dismounting from Dapple, caught hold of one

of the asses of the three country girls by the halter, and dropping on

both knees on the ground, he said, “Queen and princess and duchess of

beauty, may it please your haughtiness and greatness to receive into

your favour and good-will your captive knight who stands there turned

into marble stone, and quite stupefied and benumbed at finding himself

in your magnificent presence. I am Sancho Panza, his squire, and he the

vagabond knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, otherwise called ‘The Knight

of the Rueful Countenance.’”

Don Quixote had by this time placed himself on his knees beside Sancho,

and, with eyes starting out of his head and a puzzled gaze, was

regarding her whom Sancho called queen and lady; and as he could see

nothing in her except a village lass, and not a very well-favoured one,

for she was platter-faced and snub-nosed, he was perplexed and

bewildered, and did not venture to open his lips. The country girls, at

the same time, were astonished to see these two men, so different in

appearance, on their knees, preventing their companion from going on.

She, however, who had been stopped, breaking silence, said angrily and

testily, “Get out of the way, bad luck to you, and let us pass, for we

are in a hurry.”

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To which Sancho returned, “Oh, princess and universal lady of El

Toboso, is not your magnanimous heart softened by seeing the pillar and

prop of knight-errantry on his knees before your sublimated presence?”

On hearing this, one of the others exclaimed, “Woa then! why, I’m

rubbing thee down, she-ass of my father-in-law! See how the lordlings

come to make game of the village girls now, as if we here could not

chaff as well as themselves. Go your own way, and let us go ours, and

it will be better for you.”

“Get up, Sancho,” said Don Quixote at this; “I see that fortune, ‘with

evil done to me unsated still,’ has taken possession of all the roads

by which any comfort may reach ‘this wretched soul’ that I carry in my

flesh. And thou, highest perfection of excellence that can be desired,

utmost limit of grace in human shape, sole relief of this afflicted

heart that adores thee, though the malign enchanter that persecutes me

has brought clouds and cataracts on my eyes, and to them, and them

only, transformed thy unparagoned beauty and changed thy features into

those of a poor peasant girl, if so be he has not at the same time

changed mine into those of some monster to render them loathsome in thy

sight, refuse not to look upon me with tenderness and love; seeing in

this submission that I make on my knees to thy transformed beauty the

humility with which my soul adores thee.”

“Hey-day! My grandfather!” cried the girl, “much I care for your

love-making! Get out of the way and let us pass, and we’ll thank you.”

Sancho stood aside and let her go, very well pleased to have got so

well out of the hobble he was in. The instant the village lass who had

done duty for Dulcinea found herself free, prodding her “cackney” with

a spike she had at the end of a stick, she set off at full speed across

the field. The she-ass, however, feeling the point more acutely than

usual, began cutting such capers, that it flung the lady Dulcinea to

the ground; seeing which, Don Quixote ran to raise her up, and Sancho

to fix and girth the pack-saddle, which also had slipped under the

ass’s belly. The pack-saddle being secured, as Don Quixote was about to

lift up his enchanted mistress in his arms and put her upon her beast,

the lady, getting up from the ground, saved him the trouble, for, going

back a little, she took a short run, and putting both hands on the

croup of the ass she dropped into the saddle more lightly than a

falcon, and sat astride like a man, whereat Sancho said, “Rogue! but

our lady is lighter than a lanner, and might teach the cleverest

Cordovan or Mexican how to mount; she cleared the back of the saddle in

one jump, and without spurs she is making the hackney go like a zebra;

and her damsels are no way behind her, for they all fly like the wind;”

which was the truth, for as soon as they saw Dulcinea mounted, they

pushed on after her, and sped away without looking back, for more than

half a league.

Don Quixote followed them with his eyes, and when they were no longer

in sight, he turned to Sancho and said, “How now, Sancho? thou seest

how I am hated by enchanters! And see to what a length the malice and

spite they bear me go, when they seek to deprive me of the happiness it

would give me to see my lady in her own proper form. The fact is I was

born to be an example of misfortune, and the target and mark at which

the arrows of adversity are aimed and directed. Observe too, Sancho,

that these traitors were not content with changing and transforming my

Dulcinea, but they transformed and changed her into a shape as mean and

ill-favoured as that of the village girl yonder; and at the same time

they robbed her of that which is such a peculiar property of ladies of

distinction, that is to say, the sweet fragrance that comes of being

always among perfumes and flowers. For I must tell thee, Sancho, that

when I approached to put Dulcinea upon her hackney (as thou sayest it

was, though to me it appeared a she-ass), she gave me a whiff of raw

garlic that made my head reel, and poisoned my very heart.”

“O scum of the earth!” cried Sancho at this, “O miserable, spiteful

enchanters! O that I could see you all strung by the gills, like

sardines on a twig! Ye know a great deal, ye can do a great deal, and

ye do a great deal more. It ought to have been enough for you, ye

scoundrels, to have changed the pearls of my lady’s eyes into oak

galls, and her hair of purest gold into the bristles of a red ox’s

tail, and in short, all her features from fair to foul, without

meddling with her smell; for by that we might somehow have found out

what was hidden underneath that ugly rind; though, to tell the truth, I

never perceived her ugliness, but only her beauty, which was raised to

the highest pitch of perfection by a mole she had on her right lip,

like a moustache, with seven or eight red hairs like threads of gold,

and more than a palm long.”

“From the correspondence which exists between those of the face and

those of the body,” said Don Quixote, “Dulcinea must have another mole

resembling that on the thick of the thigh on that side on which she has

the one on her face; but hairs of the length thou hast mentioned are

very long for moles.”

“Well, all I can say is there they were as plain as could be,” replied

Sancho.

“I believe it, my friend,” returned Don Quixote; “for nature bestowed

nothing on Dulcinea that was not perfect and well-finished; and so, if

she had a hundred moles like the one thou hast described, in her they

would not be moles, but moons and shining stars. But tell me, Sancho,

that which seemed to me to be a pack-saddle as thou wert fixing it, was

it a flat-saddle or a side-saddle?”

“It was neither,” replied Sancho, “but a jineta saddle, with a field

covering worth half a kingdom, so rich is it.”

“And that I could not see all this, Sancho!” said Don Quixote; “once

more I say, and will say a thousand times, I am the most unfortunate of

men.”

Sancho, the rogue, had enough to do to hide his laughter, at hearing

the simplicity of the master he had so nicely befooled. At length,

after a good deal more conversation had passed between them, they

remounted their beasts, and followed the road to Saragossa, which they

expected to reach in time to take part in a certain grand festival

which is held every year in that illustrious city; but before they got

there things happened to them, so many, so important, and so strange,

that they deserve to be recorded and read, as will be seen farther on.

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