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VOLUME[ VOLUME 1  ]  

CHAPTER[ XLIX. WHICH TREATS OF THE SHREWD CONVERSATION WHICH SANCHO PANZA HELD WITH HIS

MASTER DON QUIXOTE

"Aha, I have caught you," said Sancho; "this is what in my heart and soul

I was longing to know. Come now, senor, can you deny what is commonly

said around us, when a person is out of humour, 'I don't know what ails

so-and-so, that he neither eats, nor drinks, nor sleeps, nor gives a

proper answer to any question; one would think he was enchanted'? From

which it is to be gathered that those who do not eat, or drink, or sleep,

or do any of the natural acts I am speaking of-that such persons are

enchanted; but not those that have the desire your worship has, and drink

when drink is given them, and eat when there is anything to eat, and

answer every question that is asked them."

"What thou sayest is true, Sancho," replied Don Quixote; "but I have

already told thee there are many sorts of enchantments, and it may be

that in the course of time they have been changed one for another, and

that now it may be the way with enchanted people to do all that I do,

though they did not do so before; so it is vain to argue or draw

inferences against the usage of the time. I know and feel that I am

enchanted, and that is enough to ease my conscience; for it would weigh

heavily on it if I thought that I was not enchanted, and that in a

faint-hearted and cowardly way I allowed myself to lie in this cage,

defrauding multitudes of the succour I might afford to those in need and

distress, who at this very moment may be in sore want of my aid and

protection."

"Still for all that," replied Sancho, "I say that, for your greater and

fuller satisfaction, it would be well if your worship were to try to get

out of this prison (and I promise to do all in my power to help, and even

to take you out of it), and see if you could once more mount your good

Rocinante, who seems to be enchanted too, he is so melancholy and

dejected; and then we might try our chance in looking for adventures

again; and if we have no luck there will be time enough to go back to the

cage; in which, on the faith of a good and loyal squire, I promise to

shut myself up along with your worship, if so be you are so unfortunate,

or I so stupid, as not to be able to carry out my plan."

"I am content to do as thou sayest, brother Sancho," said Don Quixote,

"and when thou seest an opportunity for effecting my release I will obey

thee absolutely; but thou wilt see, Sancho, how mistaken thou art in thy

conception of my misfortune."

The knight-errant and the ill-errant squire kept up their conversation

till they reached the place where the curate, the canon, and the barber,

who had already dismounted, were waiting for them. The carter at once

unyoked the oxen and left them to roam at large about the pleasant green

spot, the freshness of which seemed to invite, not enchanted people like

Don Quixote, but wide-awake, sensible folk like his squire, who begged

the curate to allow his master to leave the cage for a little; for if

they did not let him out, the prison might not be as clean as the

propriety of such a gentleman as his master required. The curate

understood him, and said he would very gladly comply with his request,

only that he feared his master, finding himself at liberty, would take to

his old courses and make off where nobody could ever find him again.

"I will answer for his not running away," said Sancho.

"And I also," said the canon, "especially if he gives me his word as a

knight not to leave us without our consent."

Don Quixote, who was listening to all this, said, "I give it;-moreover

one who is enchanted as I am cannot do as he likes with himself; for he

who had enchanted him could prevent his moving from one place for three

ages, and if he attempted to escape would bring him back flying."--And

that being so, they might as well release him, particularly as it would

be to the advantage of all; for, if they did not let him out, he

protested he would be unable to avoid offending their nostrils unless

they kept their distance.

The canon took his hand, tied together as they both were, and on his word

and promise they unbound him, and rejoiced beyond measure he was to find

himself out of the cage. The first thing he did was to stretch himself

all over, and then he went to where Rocinante was standing and giving him

a couple of slaps on the haunches said, "I still trust in God and in his

blessed mother, O flower and mirror of steeds, that we shall soon see

ourselves, both of us, as we wish to be, thou with thy master on thy

back, and I mounted upon thee, following the calling for which God sent

me into the world." And so saying, accompanied by Sancho, he withdrew to

a retired spot, from which he came back much relieved and more eager than

ever to put his squire's scheme into execution.

The canon gazed at him, wondering at the extraordinary nature of his

madness, and that in all his remarks and replies he should show such

excellent sense, and only lose his stirrups, as has been already said,

when the subject of chivalry was broached. And so, moved by compassion,

he said to him, as they all sat on the green grass awaiting the arrival

of the provisions:

"Is it possible, gentle sir, that the nauseous and idle reading of books

of chivalry can have had such an effect on your worship as to upset your

reason so that you fancy yourself enchanted, and the like, all as far

from the truth as falsehood itself is? How can there be any human

understanding that can persuade itself there ever was all that infinity

of Amadises in the world, or all that multitude of famous knights, all

those emperors of Trebizond, all those Felixmartes of Hircania, all those

palfreys, and damsels-errant, and serpents, and monsters, and giants, and

marvellous adventures, and enchantments of every kind, and battles, and

prodigious encounters, splendid costumes, love-sick princesses, squires

made counts, droll dwarfs, love letters, billings and cooings,

swashbuckler women, and, in a word, all that nonsense the books of

chivalry contain? For myself, I can only say that when I read them, so

long as I do not stop to think that they are all lies and frivolity, they

give me a certain amount of pleasure; but when I come to consider what

they are, I fling the very best of them at the wall, and would fling it

into the fire if there were one at hand, as richly deserving such

punishment as cheats and impostors out of the range of ordinary

toleration, and as founders of new sects and modes of life, and teachers

that lead the ignorant public to believe and accept as truth all the

folly they contain. And such is their audacity, they even dare to

unsettle the wits of gentlemen of birth and intelligence, as is shown

plainly by the way they have served your worship, when they have brought

you to such a pass that you have to be shut up in a cage and carried on

an ox-cart as one would carry a lion or a tiger from place to place to

make money by showing it. Come, Senor Don Quixote, have some compassion

for yourself, return to the bosom of common sense, and make use of the

liberal share of it that heaven has been pleased to bestow upon you,

employing your abundant gifts of mind in some other reading that may

serve to benefit your conscience and add to your honour. And if, still

led away by your natural bent, you desire to read books of achievements

and of chivalry, read the Book of Judges in the Holy Scriptures, for

there you will find grand reality, and deeds as true as they are heroic.

Lusitania had a Viriatus, Rome a Caesar, Carthage a Hannibal, Greece an

Alexander, Castile a Count Fernan Gonzalez, Valencia a Cid, Andalusia a

Gonzalo Fernandez, Estremadura a Diego Garcia de Paredes, Jerez a Garci

Perez de Vargas, Toledo a Garcilaso, Seville a Don Manuel de Leon, to

read of whose valiant deeds will entertain and instruct the loftiest

minds and fill them with delight and wonder. Here, Senor Don Quixote,

will be reading worthy of your sound understanding; from which you will

rise learned in history, in love with virtue, strengthened in goodness,

improved in manners, brave without rashness, prudent without cowardice;

and all to the honour of God, your own advantage and the glory of La

Mancha, whence, I am informed, your worship derives your birth."

Don Quixote listened with the greatest attention to the canon's words,

and when he found he had finished, after regarding him for some time, he

replied to him:

"It appears to me, gentle sir, that your worship's discourse is intended

to persuade me that there never were any knights-errant in the world, and

that all the books of chivalry are false, lying, mischievous and useless

to the State, and that I have done wrong in reading them, and worse in

believing them, and still worse in imitating them, when I undertook to

follow the arduous calling of knight-errantry which they set forth; for

you deny that there ever were Amadises of Gaul or of Greece, or any other

of the knights of whom the books are full."

"It is all exactly as you state it," said the canon; to which Don Quixote

returned, "You also went on to say that books of this kind had done me

much harm, inasmuch as they had upset my senses, and shut me up in a

cage, and that it would be better for me to reform and change my studies,

and read other truer books which would afford more pleasure and

instruction."

"Just so," said the canon.

"Well then," returned Don Quixote, "to my mind it is you who are the one

that is out of his wits and enchanted, as you have ventured to utter such

blasphemies against a thing so universally acknowledged and accepted as

true that whoever denies it, as you do, deserves the same punishment

which you say you inflict on the books that irritate you when you read

them. For to try to persuade anybody that Amadis, and all the other

knights-adventurers with whom the books are filled, never existed, would

be like trying to persuade him that the sun does not yield light, or ice

cold, or earth nourishment. What wit in the world can persuade another

that the story of the Princess Floripes and Guy of Burgundy is not true,

or that of Fierabras and the bridge of Mantible, which happened in the

time of Charlemagne? For by all that is good it is as true as that it is

daylight now; and if it be a lie, it must be a lie too that there was a

Hector, or Achilles, or Trojan war, or Twelve Peers of France, or Arthur

of England, who still lives changed into a raven, and is unceasingly

looked for in his kingdom. One might just as well try to make out that

the history of Guarino Mezquino, or of the quest of the Holy Grail, is

false, or that the loves of Tristram and the Queen Yseult are apocryphal,

as well as those of Guinevere and Lancelot, when there are persons who

can almost remember having seen the Dame Quintanona, who was the best

cupbearer in Great Britain. And so true is this, that I recollect a

grandmother of mine on the father's side, whenever she saw any dame in a

venerable hood, used to say to me, 'Grandson, that one is like Dame

Quintanona,' from which I conclude that she must have known her, or at

least had managed to see some portrait of her. Then who can deny that the

story of Pierres and the fair Magalona is true, when even to this day may

be seen in the king's armoury the pin with which the valiant Pierres

guided the wooden horse he rode through the air, and it is a trifle

bigger than the pole of a cart? And alongside of the pin is Babieca's

saddle, and at Roncesvalles there is Roland's horn, as large as a large

beam; whence we may infer that there were Twelve Peers, and a Pierres,

and a Cid, and other knights like them, of the sort people commonly call

adventurers. Or perhaps I shall be told, too, that there was no such

knight-errant as the valiant Lusitanian Juan de Merlo, who went to

Burgundy and in the city of Arras fought with the famous lord of Charny,

Mosen Pierres by name, and afterwards in the city of Basle with Mosen

Enrique de Remesten, coming out of both encounters covered with fame and

honour; or adventures and challenges achieved and delivered, also in

Burgundy, by the valiant Spaniards Pedro Barba and Gutierre Quixada (of

whose family I come in the direct male line), when they vanquished the

sons of the Count of San Polo. I shall be told, too, that Don Fernando de

Guevara did not go in quest of adventures to Germany, where he engaged in

combat with Micer George, a knight of the house of the Duke of Austria. I

shall be told that the jousts of Suero de Quinones, him of the 'Paso,'

and the emprise of Mosen Luis de Falces against the Castilian knight, Don

Gonzalo de Guzman, were mere mockeries; as well as many other

achievements of Christian knights of these and foreign realms, which are

so authentic and true, that, I repeat, he who denies them must be totally

wanting in reason and good sense."

The canon was amazed to hear the medley of truth and fiction Don Quixote

uttered, and to see how well acquainted he was with everything relating

or belonging to the achievements of his knight-errantry; so he said in

reply:

"I cannot deny, Senor Don Quixote, that there is some truth in what you

say, especially as regards the Spanish knights-errant; and I am willing

to grant too that the Twelve Peers of France existed, but I am not

disposed to believe that they did all the things that the Archbishop

Turpin relates of them. For the truth of the matter is they were knights

chosen by the kings of France, and called 'Peers' because they were all

equal in worth, rank and prowess (at least if they were not they ought to

have been), and it was a kind of religious order like those of Santiago

and Calatrava in the present day, in which it is assumed that those who

take it are valiant knights of distinction and good birth; and just as we

say now a Knight of St. John, or of Alcantara, they used to say then a

Knight of the Twelve Peers, because twelve equals were chosen for that

military order. That there was a Cid, as well as a Bernardo del Carpio,

there can be no doubt; but that they did the deeds people say they did, I

hold to be very doubtful. In that other matter of the pin of Count

Pierres that you speak of, and say is near Babieca's saddle in the

Armoury, I confess my sin; for I am either so stupid or so short-sighted,

that, though I have seen the saddle, I have never been able to see the

pin, in spite of it being as big as your worship says it is."

"For all that it is there, without any manner of doubt," said Don

Quixote; "and more by token they say it is inclosed in a sheath of

cowhide to keep it from rusting."

"All that may be," replied the canon; "but, by the orders I have

received, I do not remember seeing it. However, granting it is there,

that is no reason why I am bound to believe the stories of all those

Amadises and of all that multitude of knights they tell us about, nor is

it reasonable that a man like your worship, so worthy, and with so many

good qualities, and endowed with such a good understanding, should allow

himself to be persuaded that such wild crazy things as are written in

those absurd books of chivalry are really true."

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