Don Quixote

e of the heart."

Sancho wanted to reply, but the voice of the Knight of the Wood, which was neither very bad nor very good, prevented him from doing so, and the two men listened in amazement as he sang this sonnet:

Set for me, lady, the line I must pursue,

created by and matching your sweet will;

and it shall be so rev'renced by my own,

that I'll ne'er contravene its slightest whim.

If you wish my voice mute about my ills

until I die, then here I've reached my end:

if you desire my woes sung in a fashion

rare and strange, then love himself will chant them.

A perfect proof of contraries I've become,

hard as diamond, soft as wax, and yet my soul

reconciles them, obeying the laws of love.

I bare my breast to you, whether soft or hard:

incise there and impress there all you will;

your will, I swear, shall be my eternal rule.



With an Oh! torn, apparently, from the very depths of his heart, the Knight of the Wood ended his song, and then, a short while later, in a sad and sorrowful voice, he said:

"O most beautiful and ungrateful woman in the world! How can you, most serene Casildea of Vandalia, allow this your captive knight to be consumed and to perish in continual wanderings and harsh and rigorous labors? Is it not enough that I have obliged all the knights of Navarra, Leon, Andalucia, Castilla, and La Mancha to confess that you are the most beautiful woman in the world?"

"Oh no," said Don Quixote, "for I am from La Mancha, and I have confessed no such thing, and I could not and ought not confess anything so prejudicial to the beauty of my lady; now you can see, Sancho, that this knight is talking nonsense. But let us listen: perhaps he will say more about himself."

"He's bound to," replied Sancho, "because he seems ready to complain for a month without stopping."

But that did not happen, because the Knight of the Wood, hearing voices speaking nearby, lamented no further but rose to his feet and said in a loud but courteous voice:

"Who is it? Who are you? Do you count yourself among the contented or the afflicted?"

"The afflicted," responded Don Quixote.

"Then approach," responded the Knight of the Wood, "and you shall realize that you are approaching sorrow and affliction personified."

Don Quixote, seeing that his reply was gentle and courteous, approached him, and Sancho did the same.

The lamenting knight grasped Don Quixote's arm, saying:

"Sit here, Senor Knight; for me to understand that you are a knight, and one who professes knight errantry, it is enough to find you in this place, where solitude and the night dews are your companions, the natural couches and proper lodgings of knights errant."

To which Don Quixote responded:

"I am a knight, of the profession you say, and though sorrow, sadness, and misfortune have their own places in my soul, this does not mean that the compassion I feel for other people's afflictions has fled. I gathered from what you sang a little while ago that your woes are amorous, I mean, the result of the love you have for that beautiful ingrate you named in your lamentations."

During this conversation they sat together on the hard ground, in peace and good fellowship, as if at break of day they would not need to break each other's heads.

"By any chance, Senor Knight," the Knight of the Wood asked Don Quixote, "are you in love?"

"Unfortunately I am," responded Don Quixote, "although the adversities born of well-placed thoughts should be considered mercies rather than misfortunes."

"That is true," said the Knight of the Wood, "if too much disdain does not confound our reason and understanding and begin to resemble revenge."

"I never was disdained by my lady," responded Don Quixote.

"No, of course not," said Sancho, who was close to them, "because my lady is as meek as a lamb: she's as soft as butter."

"Is this your squire?" asked the Knight of the Wood.

"Yes, it is," responded Don Quixote.

"I have never seen a squire," replied the Knight of the Wood, "who would dare speak when his master was speaking: at least, there stands mine, as big as his father, and no one can prove he has even moved his lips while I am speaking."

"Well, by my faith," said Sancho, "I have spoken, and can speak, in front of any...enough said, we'll let sleeping dogs lie."

The squire of the Knight of the Wood took Sancho by the arm and said:

"Let's go where we can talk in a squirely way about anything we like, and leave these master gentlemen of ours to argue and tell each other stories about their loves; I'll bet they're still at it at dawn, and no closer to finishing."

"All right, then," said Sancho, "and I'll tell your grace who I am, and then you can tell me whether or not I'm a match for any talkative squire."

Saying this, the two squires moved away, and their conversation was as amusing as the one between their masters was solemn.





CHAPTER XIII


In which the adventure of the Knight of the Wood continues, along with perceptive, unprecedented, and amiable conversation between the two squires



Knights and squires were separated, the latter recounting their lives and the former their loves, but the history first relates the conversation of the servants and then goes on to that of their masters, and so it says that as they moved a short distance away, the Squire of the Wood said to Sancho:

"We have a difficult life, Senor, those of us who are squires to knights errant: the truth is we eat our bread by the sweat of our brow, which is one of God's curses on our first parents."

"You could also say," added Sancho, "that we eat it in the icy cold of our bodies, because who suffers more heat and cold than the wretched squires of knight errantry? If we ate, it would be easier because sorrows fade with a little bread, but sometimes we can go a day or two with nothing for our breakfast but the wind that blows."

"All of this is made bearable and tolerable," said the Squire of the Wood, "by our hope of a reward, because if the knight errant is not too unfortunate, in a little while the squire who serves him will be rewarded with an attractive governorship of an insula or a fine countship."

"I," replied Sancho, "have already told my master that I'll be content with the governorship of an insula, and he's so noble and generous that he's promised it to me on many different occasions."

"I," said the Squire of the Wood, "will be satisfied with a canonship as payment for my services, and my master has already set one aside for me, and what a nice canonship it is!"

"Your grace's master," said Sancho, "must be an ecclesiastical kind of knight who can do favors like that for his good squires, but mine is a lay knight, though I do remember when some very wise people, though I think they were malicious, too, advised him to become an archbishop, but he only wanted to be an emperor, and I was trembling at the thought that he'd decide to enter the Church, because I didn't think I was qualified to hold any benefices, because I can tell your grace that even though I look like a man, I'm nothing but an animal when it comes to entering the Church."

"Well, the truth is your grace is mistaken," said the Squire of the Wood, "because not all insular governorships are good. Some are crooked, some are poor, and some are gloomy, and even the proudest and best of them bring a heavy burden of cares and troubles that has to be borne on the shoulders of the unlucky man who happens to be governor. It would be much better for those of us who perform this miserable service to return home and do some easier work, like hunting or fishing, for is there any squire in the world so poor he doesn't have a horse, a couple of greyhounds, and a fishing pole to help him pass the time?"

"I have all those things," responded Sancho. "Well, the truth is I don't have a horse, but my donkey is worth twice as much as my master's nag. May God send me evil days, starting tomorrow, if I'd ever trade with him, even if he threw in four bushelweights of barley. Your grace must think I'm joking about the value I put on my gray, for gray is the color of my donkey. And I wouldn't need greyhounds because there are plenty of them in my village; besides, hunting is much nicer when you do it at somebody else's expense."

"The truth of the matter, Senor Squire," responded the Squire of the Wood, "is that I've decided and resolved to leave the crazy goings-on of these knights and go back to my village and rear my children, for I have three as beautiful as Oriental pearls."

"I have two," said Sancho, "who could be presented to the pope himself, especially the girl, who I'm bringing up to be a countess, God willing, though her mother's against it."

"And how old is this lady who's being brought up to be a countess?" asked the Squire of the Wood.

"Fifteen, give or take a couple of years," responded Sancho, "but she's as tall as a lance, and as fresh as a morning in April, and as strong as a laborer."

"Those are qualities," responded the Squire of the Wood, "for being not only a countess but a nymph of the greenwood. O whoreson, but that damned little whore must be strong!"

To which Sancho replied, rather crossly:



"She isn't a whore, and neither was her mother, and neither of them will ever be one, God willing, as long as I'm alive. And speak more politely; for somebody who's spent time with knights errant, who are courtesy itself, your grace isn't very careful about your words."

"Oh, Senor Squire, how little your grace understands," replied the Squire of the Wood, "about paying a compliment! Can it be that you don't know that when a knight gives the bull in the square a good thrust with the lance, or when anybody does anything well, commoners always say: 'Oh whoreson, but that damned little whoreson did that well!'? And in that phrase, what seems to be an insult is a wonderful compliment, and you should disavow, Senor, any sons or daughters who do not perform deeds that bring their parents that kind of praise."

"I do disavow them," responded Sancho, "and in that sense and for that reason your grace could dump a whole whorehouse on me and my children and my wife, because everything they do and say deserves the best compliments, and I want to see them again so much that I pray God to deliver me from mortal sin, which would be the same as delivering me from this dangerous squirely work that I've fallen into for a second time, tempted and lured by a purse with a hundred ducados that I found one day in the heart of the Sierra Morena; and the devil places before my eyes, here, there, not here but over there, a sack filled with doblones, and at every step I take I seem to touch it with my hand, and put my arms around it, and take it to my house, and hold mortgages, and collect rents, and live like a prince, and when I'm thinking about that, all the trials I suffer with this simpleton of a master seem easy to bear, even though I know he's more of a madman than a knight."

"That," responded the Squire of the Wood, "is why they say that it's greed that tears the sack, and if we're going to talk about madmen, there's nobody in the world crazier than my master, because he's one of those who say: 'Other people's troubles kill the donkey,' and to help another knight find the wits he's lost, he pretends to be crazy and goes around looking for something that I think will hit him right in the face when he finds it."

"Is he in love, by any chance?"

"Yes," said the Squire of the Wood, "with a certain Casildea of Vandalia, the cruelest lady in the world, and the hardest to stomach, but indigestibility isn't her greatest fault; her other deceits are growling in his belly, and they'll make themselves heard before too many hours have gone by."

"There's no road so smooth," replied Sancho, "that it doesn't have some obstacle or stumbling block; they cook beans everywhere, but in my house they do it by the potful; craziness must have more companions and friends than wisdom. But if what they say is true, that misery loves company, then I can find comfort with your grace, because you serve a master who's as great a fool as mine."

"A fool, but brave," responded the Squire of the Wood, "and more of a scoundrel than foolish or brave."

"Not mine," responded Sancho. "I mean, there's nothing of the scoundrel in him; mine's as innocent as a baby; he doesn't know how to harm anybody, he can only do good to everybody, and there's no malice in him: a child could convince him it's night in the middle of the day, and because he's simple I love him with all my heart and couldn't leave him no matter how many crazy things he does."

"Even so, Senor," said the Squire of the Wood, "if the blind man leads the blind man, they're both in danger of falling into the ditch. Brother, we'd better leave soon and go back where we came from; people who look for adventures don't always find good ones."

Sancho had been spitting often, it seems, a certain kind of sticky, dry saliva, and the charitable woodish squire, seeing and noting this, said:

"I think we've talked so much our tongues are sticking to the roofs of our mouths, but I have an unsticker hanging from my saddlebow, and it's a pretty good one."

And he stood up and came back in a little while carrying a large wineskin and a meat pie half a meter long, and this is not an exaggeration, because it held a white rabbit so large that Sancho, when he touched it, thought it was a goat, and not a kid, either; and when Sancho saw this, he said:

"Senor, did you bring this with you?"

"Well, what did you think?" responded the other man. "Am I by any chance a run-of-the-mill squire? I carry better provisions on my horse's rump than a general does when he goes marching."

Sancho ate without having to be asked twice, and in the dark he wolfed down mouthfuls the size of the knots that hobble a horse. And he said:

"Your grace is a faithful and true, right and proper, magnificent and great squire, as this feast shows, and if you haven't come here by the arts of enchantment, at least it seems that way to me; but I'm so poor and unlucky that all I have in my saddlebags is a little cheese, so hard you could break a giant's skull with it, and to keep it company some four dozen carob beans and the same number of hazelnuts and other kinds of nuts, thanks to the poverty of my master and the idea he has and the rule he keeps that knights errant should not live and survive on anything but dried fruits and the plants of the field."

"By my faith, brother," replied the Squire of the Wood, "my stomach isn't made for thistles or wild pears or forest roots. Let our masters have their knightly opinions and rules and eat what their laws command. I have my baskets of food, and this wineskin hanging from the saddlebow, just in case, and I'm so devoted to it and love it so much that I can't let too much time pass without giving it a thousand kisses and a thousand embraces."

And saying this, he placed the wineskin in Sancho's hands, who tilted it back and put it to his mouth and looked at the stars for a quarter of an hour, and when he had finished drinking, he leaned his head to one side, heaved a great sigh, and said:

"O whoreson, you damned rascal, but that's good!"

"Do you see?" said the Squire of the Wood when he heard Sancho's "whoreson." "You complimented the wine by calling it whoreson."

"And I say," responded Sancho, "that I confess to knowing it's no dishonor to call anybody a whoreson when your intention is to compliment him. But tell me, Senor, by the thing you love most: is this wine from Ciudad Real?"

"Bravo! What a winetaster!" responded the Squire of the Wood. "It's from there and no place else, and it's aged a few years."

"You can't fool me!" said Sancho. "You shouldn't think it was beyond me to know about this wine. Does it surprise you, Senor Squire, that I have so great and natural an instinct for knowing wines that if I just smell one I know where it comes from, its lineage, its taste, its age, and how it will change, and everything else that has anything to do with it? But it's no wonder, because in my family, on my father's side, were the two best winetasters that La Mancha had in many years, and to prove it I'll tell you a story about them. The two of them were asked to taste some wine from a cask and say what they thought about its condition and quality, and whether it was a good or bad wine. One tasted it with the tip of his tongue; the other only brought it up to his nose. The first said that the wine tasted of iron, the second that it tasted more of tanned leather. The owner said the cask was clean and the wine had not been fortified in a way that could have given it the taste of iron or leather. Even so, the two famous winetasters insisted that what they said was true. Time passed, the wine was sold, and when the cask was cleaned, inside it they found a small key on a leather strap. So your grace can see that a man who comes from that kind of family can give his opinion about matters like these."

"That's why I say," said the Squire of the Wood, "that we should stop looking for adventures, and if we have loaves of bread, we shouldn't go around looking for cakes, and we ought to go back home: God will find us there, if He wants to."

"I'll serve my master until he gets to Zaragoza; after that, we'll work out something."

In short, the two good squires spoke so much and drank so much that only sleep could stop their tongues and allay their thirst, for it would have been impossible to take it away altogether; and so, with both of them holding on to the almost empty wineskin, and with mouthfuls of food half-chewed in their mouths, they fell asleep, which is where we shall leave them now in order to recount what befell the Knight of the Wood and the Knight of the Sorrowful Face.





CHAPTER XIV


In which the adventure of the Knight of the Wood continues



Among the many words that passed between Don Quixote and the Knight of the Forest, the history says that the Knight of the Wood said to Don Quixote:

"Finally, Senor Knight, I want you to know that my destiny or, I should say, my own free choice, led me to fall in love with the peerless Casildea of Vandalia. I call her without peer because she has none, in the greatness of her stature or in the loftiness of her rank and beauty. This Casildea, then, whom I am describing to you, repaid my virtuous thoughts and courteous desires by having me, as his stepmother did with Hercules, engage in many different kinds of dangers, promising me at the end of each one that at the end of the next my hopes would be realized; but my labors have been linked together for so long that I have lost count, nor do I know which will be the final one that initiates the satisfaction of my virtuous desires. On one occasion she orde