Chương Chương 59 · CHAPTER VII. OF WHAT PASSED BETWEEN DON QUIXOTE AND HIS SQUIRE, TOGETHER WITH OTHER

. CHAPTER VII. OF WHAT PASSED BETWEEN DON QUIXOTE AND HIS SQUIRE, TOGETHER WITH OTHER

CHAPTER VII.

OF WHAT PASSED BETWEEN DON QUIXOTE AND HIS SQUIRE, TOGETHER WITH OTHER

VERY NOTABLE INCIDENTS

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The instant the housekeeper saw Sancho Panza shut himself in with her

master, she guessed what they were about; and suspecting that the

result of the consultation would be a resolve to undertake a third

sally, she seized her mantle, and in deep anxiety and distress, ran to

find the bachelor Samson Carrasco, as she thought that, being a

well-spoken man, and a new friend of her master’s, he might be able to

persuade him to give up any such crazy notion. She found him pacing the

patio of his house, and, perspiring and flurried, she fell at his feet

the moment she saw him.

Carrasco, seeing how distressed and overcome she was, said to her,

“What is this, mistress housekeeper? What has happened to you? One

would think you heart-broken.”

“Nothing, Señor Samson,” said she, “only that my master is breaking

out, plainly breaking out.”

“Whereabouts is he breaking out, señora?” asked Samson; “has any part

of his body burst?”

“He is only breaking out at the door of his madness,” she replied; “I

mean, dear señor bachelor, that he is going to break out again (and

this will be the third time) to hunt all over the world for what he

calls ventures, though I can’t make out why he gives them that name.

The first time he was brought back to us slung across the back of an

ass, and belaboured all over; and the second time he came in an

ox-cart, shut up in a cage, in which he persuaded himself he was

enchanted, and the poor creature was in such a state that the mother

that bore him would not have known him; lean, yellow, with his eyes

sunk deep in the cells of his skull; so that to bring him round again,

ever so little, cost me more than six hundred eggs, as God knows, and

all the world, and my hens too, that won’t let me tell a lie.”

“That I can well believe,” replied the bachelor, “for they are so good

and so fat, and so well-bred, that they would not say one thing for

another, though they were to burst for it. In short then, mistress

housekeeper, that is all, and there is nothing the matter, except what

it is feared Don Quixote may do?”

“No, señor,” said she.

“Well then,” returned the bachelor, “don’t be uneasy, but go home in

peace; get me ready something hot for breakfast, and while you are on

the way say the prayer of Santa Apollonia, that is if you know it; for

I will come presently and you will see miracles.”

“Woe is me,” cried the housekeeper, “is it the prayer of Santa

Apollonia you would have me say? That would do if it was the toothache

my master had; but it is in the brains, what he has got.”

“I know what I am saying, mistress housekeeper; go, and don’t set

yourself to argue with me, for you know I am a bachelor of Salamanca,

and one can’t be more of a bachelor than that,” replied Carrasco; and

with this the housekeeper retired, and the bachelor went to look for

the curate, and arrange with him what will be told in its proper place.

While Don Quixote and Sancho were shut up together, they had a

discussion which the history records with great precision and

scrupulous exactness. Sancho said to his master, “Señor, I have educed

my wife to let me go with your worship wherever you choose to take me.”

“Induced, you should say, Sancho,” said Don Quixote; “not educed.”

“Once or twice, as well as I remember,” replied Sancho, “I have begged

of your worship not to mend my words, if so be as you understand what I

mean by them; and if you don’t understand them to say ‘Sancho,’ or

‘devil,’ ‘I don’t understand thee; and if I don’t make my meaning

plain, then you may correct me, for I am so focile—”

“I don’t understand thee, Sancho,” said Don Quixote at once; “for I

know not what ‘I am so focile’ means.”

“‘So focile’ means I am so much that way,” replied Sancho.

“I understand thee still less now,” said Don Quixote.

“Well, if you can’t understand me,” said Sancho, “I don’t know how to

put it; I know no more, God help me.”

“Oh, now I have hit it,” said Don Quixote; “thou wouldst say thou art

so docile, tractable, and gentle that thou wilt take what I say to

thee, and submit to what I teach thee.”

“I would bet,” said Sancho, “that from the very first you understood

me, and knew what I meant, but you wanted to put me out that you might

hear me make another couple of dozen blunders.”

“May be so,” replied Don Quixote; “but to come to the point, what does

Teresa say?”

“Teresa says,” replied Sancho, “that I should make sure with your

worship, and ‘let papers speak and beards be still,’ for ‘he who binds

does not wrangle,’ since one ‘take’ is better than two ‘I’ll give

thee’s;’ and I say a woman’s advice is no great thing, and he who won’t

take it is a fool.”

“And so say I,” said Don Quixote; “continue, Sancho my friend; go on;

you talk pearls to-day.”

“The fact is,” continued Sancho, “that, as your worship knows better

than I do, we are all of us liable to death, and to-day we are, and

to-morrow we are not, and the lamb goes as soon as the sheep, and

nobody can promise himself more hours of life in this world than God

may be pleased to give him; for death is deaf, and when it comes to

knock at our life’s door, it is always urgent, and neither prayers, nor

struggles, nor sceptres, nor mitres, can keep it back, as common talk

and report say, and as they tell us from the pulpits every day.”

“All that is very true,” said Don Quixote; “but I cannot make out what

thou art driving at.”

“What I am driving at,” said Sancho, “is that your worship settle some

fixed wages for me, to be paid monthly while I am in your service, and

that the same be paid me out of your estate; for I don’t care to stand

on rewards which either come late, or ill, or never at all; God help me

with my own. In short, I would like to know what I am to get, be it

much or little; for the hen will lay on one egg, and many littles make

a much, and so long as one gains something there is nothing lost. To be

sure, if it should happen (what I neither believe nor expect) that your

worship were to give me that island you have promised me, I am not so

ungrateful nor so grasping but that I would be willing to have the

revenue of such island valued and stopped out of my wages in due

promotion.”

“Sancho, my friend,” replied Don Quixote, “sometimes proportion may be

as good as promotion.”

“I see,” said Sancho; “I’ll bet I ought to have said proportion, and

not promotion; but it is no matter, as your worship has understood me.”

“And so well understood,” returned Don Quixote, “that I have seen into

the depths of thy thoughts, and know the mark thou art shooting at with

the countless shafts of thy proverbs. Look here, Sancho, I would

readily fix thy wages if I had ever found any instance in the histories

of the knights-errant to show or indicate, by the slightest hint, what

their squires used to get monthly or yearly; but I have read all or the

best part of their histories, and I cannot remember reading of any

knight-errant having assigned fixed wages to his squire; I only know

that they all served on reward, and that when they least expected it,

if good luck attended their masters, they found themselves recompensed

with an island or something equivalent to it, or at the least they were

left with a title and lordship. If with these hopes and additional

inducements you, Sancho, please to return to my service, well and good;

but to suppose that I am going to disturb or unhinge the ancient usage

of knight-errantry, is all nonsense. And so, my Sancho, get you back to

your house and explain my intentions to your Teresa, and if she likes

and you like to be on reward with me, _bene quidem;_ if not, we remain

friends; for if the pigeon-house does not lack food, it will not lack

pigeons; and bear in mind, my son, that a good hope is better than a

bad holding, and a good grievance better than a bad compensation. I

speak in this way, Sancho, to show you that I can shower down proverbs

just as well as yourself; and in short, I mean to say, and I do say,

that if you don’t like to come on reward with me, and run the same

chance that I run, God be with you and make a saint of you; for I shall

find plenty of squires more obedient and painstaking, and not so

thickheaded or talkative as you are.”

When Sancho heard his master’s firm, resolute language, a cloud came

over the sky with him and the wings of his heart drooped, for he had

made sure that his master would not go without him for all the wealth

of the world; and as he stood there dumbfoundered and moody, Samson

Carrasco came in with the housekeeper and niece, who were anxious to

hear by what arguments he was about to dissuade their master from going

to seek adventures. The arch wag Samson came forward, and embracing him

as he had done before, said with a loud voice, “O flower of

knight-errantry! O shining light of arms! O honour and mirror of the

Spanish nation! may God Almighty in his infinite power grant that any

person or persons, who would impede or hinder thy third sally, may find

no way out of the labyrinth of their schemes, nor ever accomplish what

they most desire!” And then, turning to the housekeeper, he said,

“Mistress housekeeper may just as well give over saying the prayer of

Santa Apollonia, for I know it is the positive determination of the

spheres that Señor Don Quixote shall proceed to put into execution his

new and lofty designs; and I should lay a heavy burden on my conscience

did I not urge and persuade this knight not to keep the might of his

strong arm and the virtue of his valiant spirit any longer curbed and

checked, for by his inactivity he is defrauding the world of the

redress of wrongs, of the protection of orphans, of the honour of

virgins, of the aid of widows, and of the support of wives, and other

matters of this kind appertaining, belonging, proper and peculiar to

the order of knight-errantry. On, then, my lord Don Quixote, beautiful

and brave, let your worship and highness set out to-day rather than

to-morrow; and if anything be needed for the execution of your purpose,

here am I ready in person and purse to supply the want; and were it

requisite to attend your magnificence as squire, I should esteem it the

happiest good fortune.”

At this, Don Quixote, turning to Sancho, said, “Did I not tell thee,

Sancho, there would be squires enough and to spare for me? See now who

offers to become one; no less than the illustrious bachelor Samson

Carrasco, the perpetual joy and delight of the courts of the Salamancan

schools, sound in body, discreet, patient under heat or cold, hunger or

thirst, with all the qualifications requisite to make a knight-errant’s

squire! But heaven forbid that, to gratify my own inclination, I should

shake or shatter this pillar of letters and vessel of the sciences, and

cut down this towering palm of the fair and liberal arts. Let this new

Samson remain in his own country, and, bringing honour to it, bring

honour at the same time on the grey heads of his venerable parents; for

I will be content with any squire that comes to hand, as Sancho does

not deign to accompany me.”

“I do deign,” said Sancho, deeply moved and with tears in his eyes; “it

shall not be said of me, master mine,” he continued, “‘the bread eaten

and the company dispersed.’ Nay, I come of no ungrateful stock, for all

the world knows, but particularly my own town, who the Panzas from whom

I am descended were; and, what is more, I know and have learned, by

many good words and deeds, your worship’s desire to show me favour; and

if I have been bargaining more or less about my wages, it was only to

please my wife, who, when she sets herself to press a point, no hammer

drives the hoops of a cask as she drives one to do what she wants; but,

after all, a man must be a man, and a woman a woman; and as I am a man

anyhow, which I can’t deny, I will be one in my own house too, let who

will take it amiss; and so there’s nothing more to do but for your

worship to make your will with its codicil in such a way that it can’t

be provoked, and let us set out at once, to save Señor Samson’s soul

from suffering, as he says his conscience obliges him to persuade your

worship to sally out upon the world a third time; so I offer again to

serve your worship faithfully and loyally, as well and better than all

the squires that served knights-errant in times past or present.”

The bachelor was filled with amazement when he heard Sancho’s

phraseology and style of talk, for though he had read the first part of

his master’s history he never thought that he could be so droll as he

was there described; but now, hearing him talk of a “will and codicil

that could not be provoked,” instead of “will and codicil that could

not be revoked,” he believed all he had read of him, and set him down

as one of the greatest simpletons of modern times; and he said to

himself that two such lunatics as master and man the world had never

seen. In fine, Don Quixote and Sancho embraced one another and made

friends, and by the advice and with the approval of the great Carrasco,

who was now their oracle, it was arranged that their departure should

take place three days thence, by which time they could have all that

was requisite for the journey ready, and procure a closed helmet, which

Don Quixote said he must by all means take. Samson offered him one, as

he knew a friend of his who had it would not refuse it to him, though

it was more dingy with rust and mildew than bright and clean like

burnished steel.

The curses which both housekeeper and niece poured out on the bachelor

were past counting; they tore their hair, they clawed their faces, and

in the style of the hired mourners that were once in fashion, they

raised a lamentation over the departure of their master and uncle, as

if it had been his death. Samson’s intention in persuading him to sally

forth once more was to do what the history relates farther on; all by

the advice of the curate and barber, with whom he had previously

discussed the subject. Finally, then, during those three days, Don

Quixote and Sancho provided themselves with what they considered

necessary, and Sancho having pacified his wife, and Don Quixote his

niece and housekeeper, at nightfall, unseen by anyone except the

bachelor, who thought fit to accompany them half a league out of the

village, they set out for El Toboso, Don Quixote on his good Rocinante

and Sancho on his old Dapple, his alforjas furnished with certain

matters in the way of victuals, and his purse with money that Don

Quixote gave him to meet emergencies. Samson embraced him, and

entreated him to let him hear of his good or evil fortunes, so that he

might rejoice over the former or condole with him over the latter, as

the laws of friendship required. Don Quixote promised him he would do

so, and Samson returned to the village, and the other two took the road

for the great city of El Toboso.

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