Saying this, he arrived at a road that divided in four, and immediately there came to his imagination the crossroads where knights errant would begin to ponder which of those roads they would follow, and in order to imitate them, he remained motionless for a time, and after having thought very carefully, he loosened the reins and subjected his will to Rocinante's, and the horse pursued his initial intent, which was to head back to his own stall.
And having gone about two miles, Don Quixote saw a great throng of people who, as he subsequently discovered, were merchants from Toledo on their way to Murcia to buy silk. There were six of them, holding sunshades, and four servants on horseback, and three boys on foot leading the mules. No sooner had Don Quixote seen them than he imagined this to be a new adventure; and in order to imitate in every way possible the deeds he had read in his books, this seemed the perfect opportunity for him to perform one that he had in mind. And so, with gallant bearing and great boldness, he set his feet firmly in the stirrups, grasped his lance, brought the shield up to his chest, and, stopping in the middle of the road, he waited until those knights errant, for that is what he deemed and considered them to be, had reached him; and when they had come close enough to see and hear him, Don Quixote raised his voice and, in an imperious manner, he said:
"Halt, all of you, unless all of you confess that in the entire world there is no damsel more beauteous than the empress of La Mancha, the peerless Dulcinea of Toboso."
The merchants stopped when they heard these words and saw the strange appearance of the one who said them, and because of his appearance and words, they soon saw the madness of the man, but they wished to see at their leisure the purpose of the confession he was demanding, and one of them, who was something of a jokester and clever in the extreme, said:
"Senor Knight, we do not know this good lady you have mentioned; show her to us, for if she is as beautiful as you say, we will gladly and freely confess the truth you ask of us."
"If I were to show her to you," replied Don Quixote, "where would the virtue be in your confessing so obvious a truth? The significance lies in not seeing her and believing, confessing, affirming, swearing, and defending that truth; if you do not, you must do battle with me, audacious and arrogant people. And whether you come one by one, as the order of chivalry demands, or all at once, in the vicious manner of those of your ilk, here I am, ready and waiting for you, certain of the rightness of my claim."
"Senor Knight," replied the merchant, "in the name of all these princes, of whom I am one, and in order not to burden our consciences with the confession of something we have never seen or heard, and which, moreover, is so prejudicial to the empresses and queens of Alcarria and Extremadura, I implore your grace to have the goodness to show us a portrait of this lady, even if it is no larger than a grain of wheat; for with a single thread one has the entire skein, and we will be satisfied and certain, and your grace will be recompensed and requited, and although I believe we are so partial to your position that even if her portrait shows us that she is blind in one eye and that blood and brimstone flow from the other, despite all that, to please your grace, we will praise her in everything you might wish."
"Nothing flows from her, vile rabble," replied Don Quixote, burning with rage. "Nothing flows from her, I say, but amber and delicate musk; and she is not blind or humpbacked but as upright as a peak of the Guadarramas. But you will pay for how you have blasphemed against beauty as extraordinary as that of my lady!"
And, having said this, he lowered his lance and charged the man who had spoken, with so much rage and fury that if, to the daring merchant's good fortune, Rocinante had not tripped and fallen on the way, things would have gone badly for him. Rocinante fell, and his master rolled some distance on the ground, and when he tried to get up, he could not: he was too burdened by lance, shield, spurs, helmet, and the weight of his ancient armor. And as he struggled to stand, and failed, he said:
"Flee not, cowards; wretches, attend; for it is no fault of mine but of my mount that I lie here."
One of the muledrivers, who could not have been very well intentioned, heard the poor man on the ground making these insolent statements, and he could not stand by without giving him his response in the ribs. And walking up to him, he took the lance, broke it into pieces, and with one of them he began to beat our knight so furiously that notwithstanding and in spite of his armor, he thrashed Don Quixote as if he were threshing wheat. His masters shouted for him to stop and let him be, but by now the muledriver's blood was up and he did not want to leave the game until he had brought into play the last of his rage, and having recourse to the other pieces of the lance, he shattered them all on the wretched man on the ground, who, despite that storm of blows raining down on him, did not once close his mouth but continued to rail against heaven and earth and these wicked knaves, which is what they seemed to him.
The muledriver tired, and the merchants continued on their way, taking with them stories to tell about the beaten man for the rest of the journey. And he, when he found himself alone, tried again to see if he could stand, but if he could not when he was hale and healthy, how could he when he was beaten almost to a pulp? And still he considered himself fortunate, for it seemed to him that this was the kind of mishap that befell knights errant, and he attributed it all to his horse's misstep, but his body was so bruised and beaten it was not possible for him to stand.
CHAPTER V
In which the account of our knight's misfortune continues
Seeing, then, that in fact he could not move, he took refuge in his usual remedy, which was to think about some situation from his books, and his madness made him recall that of Valdovinos and the Marquis of Mantua, when Carloto left him wounded in the highlands,1 a history known to children, acknowledged by youths, celebrated, and even believed by the old, and, despite all this, no truer than the miracles of Mohammed. This is the tale that seemed to him perfectly suited for the situation in which he found himself, and so, with displays of great emotion, he began to roll about on the ground and to say with faint breath exactly what people say was said by the wounded Knight of the Wood:
"Where art thou, my lady,
that thou weepest not for my ills?
Dost not know of them, lady,
Or art thou truly false?"
And in this way he continued reciting the ballad until the lines that say:
"O noble Marquis of Mantua,
mine uncle and natural lord!"
And as luck would have it, when he reached this line, a farmer from his village happened to pass by, a neighbor of his on the way home after taking a load of wheat to the mill; the farmer, seeing a man lying there, approached and asked who he was and what the trouble was that made him complain so pitifully. Don Quixote no doubt thought the farmer was the Marquis of Mantua, his uncle, and so the only answer he gave was to go on with the ballad, recounting his misfortune and the love of the emperor's son for his wife, all of it just as it is told in the ballad.
The farmer was astounded when he heard these absurdities, and after removing the visor, which had been shattered in the beating, he wiped the fallen man's face, which was covered in dust, and as soon as he had wiped it he recognized him and said:
"Senor Quijana!"--for this must have been his name when he was in his right mind and had not yet changed from a quiet gentleman into a knight errant--"Who has done this to your grace?"
But Don Quixote went on reciting his ballad in response to every question. Seeing this, the good man, as carefully as he could, removed the breastplate and backpiece to see if he was wounded but did not see blood or cuts of any kind. He managed to lift him from the ground and with a good deal of effort put him on his own donkey, because he thought it a steadier mount. He gathered up his arms, even the broken pieces of the lance, and tied them on Rocinante, and leading the horse by the reins and the jackass by the halter, he began to walk toward his village, very dispirited at hearing the nonsense that Don Quixote was saying; Don Quixote was no less
dispirited, for he was so beaten and broken that he could barely keep his seat on the burro, and from time to time he would raise his sighs to heaven, which obliged the farmer to ask him again to tell him what was wrong; one cannot help but think that the devil made Don Quixote recall stories suited to the events that had occurred, because at that point, forgetting about Valdovinos, he remembered the Moor Abindarraez, when the governor of Antequera, Rodrigo de Narvaez, captured him and brought him back to his domain as his prisoner.2 So when the farmer asked him again how he felt and what was wrong, he answered with the same words and phrases that the captive scion of the Abencerraje family said to Rodrigo de Narvaez, just as he had read them in the history of Diana, by Jorge de Montemayor, where they are written, and he did this so deliberately that as the farmer walked along he despaired at hearing such an enormous amount of foolishness; in this way he realized that his neighbor was mad, and he hurried to reach the village in order to rid himself of the impatience Don Quixote provoked in him with his long-winded harangue. When it was concluded, Don Quixote went on to say:
"Your grace should know, Don Rodrigo de Narvaez, that this beautiful Jarifa I have mentioned to you is now the lovely Dulcinea of Toboso, for whose sake I have performed, perform now, and shall perform in the future the most famous feats of chivalry the world has seen, sees now, and will ever see."
To this the farmer replied:
"Look, your grace, poor sinner that I am, I'm not Don Rodrigo de Narvaez or the Marquis of Mantua, but Pedro Alonso, your neighbor, and your grace isn't Valdovinos or Abindarraez, but an honorable gentleman, Senor Quijana."
"I know who I am," replied Don Quixote, "and I know I can be not only those I have mentioned but the Twelve Peers of France3 as well, and even all the nine paragons of Fame,4 for my deeds will surpass all those they performed, together or singly."
Having these exchanges and others like them, they reached the village as night was falling, but the farmer waited until it grew a little darker, so that no one would see what a poor knight the beaten gentleman was. When he thought the right time had come, he entered the village and came to Don Quixote's house, which was in an uproar; the priest and barber, who were great friends of Don Quixote, were there, and in a loud voice his housekeeper was saying to them:
"What does your grace think, Senor Licentiate Pero Perez"--for this was the priest's name--"of my master's misfortune? Three days and no sign of him, or his horse, or his shield, or his lance, or his armor. Woe is me! Now I know, and it's as true as the death I owe God, that those accursed books of chivalry he's always reading have driven him crazy; and now I remember hearing him say time and time again, when he was talking to himself, that he wanted to become a knight errant and go out in the wide world in search of adventures. Those books should go straight to Satan and Barrabas, for they have ruined the finest mind in all of La Mancha."
His niece said the same and even added:
"You should know, Master Nicolas"--for this was the name of the barber--"that it often happened that my dear uncle would read these cruel books of adventures for two days and nights without stopping, and when he was finished he would toss away the book and pick up his sword and slash at the walls, and when he was very tired he would say that he had killed four giants as big as four towers, and the sweat dripping from him because of his exhaustion he would say was blood from the wounds he had received in battle, and then he would drink a whole pitcher of cold water and become cured and calm again, saying that the water was a precious drink brought to him by Esquife the Wise, a great wizard and a friend of his. But I am to blame for everything because I didn't let your graces know about the foolishness of my dear uncle so that you could help him before it went this far, and burn all these wicked books, and he has many that deserve to be burned, just as if they belonged to heretics."
"That is what I say, too," said the priest, "and by my faith, no later than tomorrow we will have a public proceeding, and they will be condemned to the flames so that they do not give occasion to whoever reads them to do what my good friend must have done."
The farmer and Don Quixote heard all of this, which allowed the farmer to understand finally what his neighbor's sickness was, and so he called out:
"Your graces, open to Senor Valdovinos and to Senor Marquis of Mantua, who is badly wounded, and to Senor the Moor Abindarraez, captive of the valiant Rodrigo de Narvaez, governor of Antequera."
At the sound of his voice they all came out, and since some recognized their friend, and others their master and uncle, who had not yet dismounted from the donkey because he could not, they ran to embrace him, and he said:
"Stop, all of you, for I have been sorely wounded on account of my horse. Take me to my bed and call, if such is possible, Uganda the Wise, that she may heal and tend to my wounds."
"Look, all of you," said the housekeeper, "in what an evil hour my heart knew exactly what was wrong with my master. Your grace can go up and rest easy, because without that gander woman coming here, we'll know how to cure you. And I say that these books of chivalry should be cursed another hundred times for bringing your grace to such a pass!"
They led him to his bed and looked for his wounds but could find none, and he said it was simple bruising because he had taken a great fall with Rocinante, his horse, as they were doing battle with ten of the most enormous and daring giants one could find anywhere in the world.
"Tut, tut!" said the priest. "So there are giants at the ball? By the Cross, I shall burn them before nightfall tomorrow."
They asked Don Quixote a thousand questions, but the only answer he gave was that they should give him something to eat and let him sleep, which was what he cared about most. They did so, and the priest questioned the farmer at length regarding how he had found Don Quixote. He told the priest everything, including the nonsense Don Quixote had said when he found him and brought him home, giving the licentiate an even greater desire to do what he did the next day, which was to call on his friend, the barber Master Nicolas, and go with him to the house of Don Quixote,
CHAPTER VI
Regarding the beguiling and careful examination carried out by the priest and the barber of the library of our ingenious gentleman
who was still asleep. The priest asked the niece for the keys to the room that contained the books responsible for the harm that had been done, and she gladly gave them to him. All of them went in, including the housekeeper, and they found more than a hundred large volumes, very nicely bound, and many other smaller ones; and as soon as the housekeeper saw them, she hurried out of the room and quickly returned with a basin of holy water and a hyssop and said to the priest:
"Take this, Senor Licentiate, and sprinkle this room, so that no enchanter, of the many in these books, can put a spell on us as punishment for wanting to drive them off the face of the earth."
The licentiate had to laugh at the housekeeper's simplemindedness, and he told the barber to hand him the books one by one so that he could see what they contained, for he might find a few that did not deserve to be punished in the flames.
"No," said the niece, "there's no reason to pardon any of them, because they all have been harmful; we ought to toss them out the windows into the courtyard, and make a pile of them and set them on fire; or better yet, take them to the corral and light the fire there, where the smoke won't bother anybody."
The housekeeper agreed, so great was the desire of the two women to see the death of those innocents; but the priest was not in favor of doing that without even reading the titles first. And the first one that Master Nicolas handed him was The Four Books of Amadis of Gaul, 1 and the priest said:
"This one seems to be a mystery, because I have heard that this was the first book of chivalry printed in Spain,2 and all the rest found their origin and inspiration here, and so it seems to me that as the proponent of the doctrine of so harmful a sect, we should, without any excuses, condemn it to the flames."
"No, Senor," said the barber, "for I've also heard that it is
the best of all the books of this kind ever written, and as a unique example of the art, it should be pardoned."
"That's true," said the priest, "and so we'll spare its life for now. Let's see the one next to it."
"It is," said the barber, "the Exploits of Esplandian, 3 who was the legitimate son of Amadis of Gaul."
"In truth," said the priest, "the mercy shown the father will not help the son. Take it, Senora Housekeeper, open that window, throw it into the corral, and let it be the beginning of the pile that will fuel the fire we shall set."
The housekeeper was very happy to do as he asked, and the good Esplandian went flying into the corral, waiting with all the patience in the world for the fire that threatened him.
"Next," said the priest.
"This one," said the barber, "is Amadis of Greece, 4 and I believe that all these over here come from the line of Amadis."
"Well, let them all go into the corral," said the priest. "For the sake of burning Queen Pintiquiniestra, and the shepherd Darinel and all his eclogues, and the perverse and complicated language of their author, I would burn along with them the father who sired me if he were to appear in the form of a knight errant."
"I'm of the same opinion," said the barber.
"And so am I," added the niece.
"Well, then," said the housekeeper, "hand them over and into the corral with them."
They handed them to her, and there were a good many of them, and she saved herself a trip down the stairs and tossed them all out the window.
"Who's that big fellow?" asked the priest.
"This," replied the barber, "is Don Olivante of Laura."5
"The author of that book," said the priest, "was the same one who composed Garden of Flowers, and the truth is I can't decide which of the two is more true or, I should say, less false; all I can say is that this one goes to the corral, because it is silly and arrogant."
"This next one is Felixmarte of Hyrcania,"6 said the barber.