Don Quixote [Trans. by Edith Grossman] (71 page)

“Even so,” replied Sancho, “for your greater ease and satisfaction, it would be a good idea for your grace to try to get out of this prison, and I
promise I’ll do everything I can to help get your grace out and back on your good Rocinante, who also seems enchanted, he’s so melancholy and sad; and when we’ve done that, we’ll try our luck again and search for more adventures, and if things don’t go well for us, we’ll still have time to get back to the cage, where I promise, like a good and loyal squire, to lock myself up along with your grace in case your grace is so unfortunate, or I’m so simple, that we can’t manage to do what I’ve said.”

“I am happy to do as you say, Sancho my brother,” replied Don Quixote, “and when you have the opportunity to effect my liberty, I shall obey you completely in everything, but you will see, Sancho, how mistaken you are in your understanding of my misfortune.”

This conversation engaged the knight errant and his erring squire until they reached the spot where the priest, the canon, and the barber, who had already dismounted, were waiting for them. The driver unyoked the oxen from the cart and allowed them to roam free in that green and peaceful place whose freshness was so inviting, if not to persons as enchanted as Don Quixote, then to those as capable and clever as his squire, who pleaded with the priest to allow his master out of the cage for a while, because if they did not let him out, his prison would not be as clean as decency demanded for a knight like his master. The priest understood him and said he would gladly do as he asked if he were not afraid that as soon as his master found himself free, he would do one of those mad things so typical of him, and go away, and never be seen by anyone again.

“I’ll guarantee that he won’t run away,” responded Sancho.

“And I’ll guarantee that and more,” said the canon, “if he gives me his word as a gentleman and a knight that he will not go away from us until we agree he can.”

“I do give it,” responded Don Quixote, who was listening to everything, “especially since one who is enchanted, as I am, is not free to do with his person what he might wish, because whoever enchanted him can make him stand stock still and not move from a spot for three centuries, and if he were to flee, he would be flown back through the air.”

Since this was true, they could certainly release him, especially because it would be to everyone’s benefit, and he protested that if they did not release him, the smell would surely trouble them unless they moved a good distance away.

The canon took one of Don Quixote’s hands, although both were tied together, and on the basis of the knight’s promise and word, they let him out of the cage, and he was infinitely and immensely happy to find
himself free, and the first thing he did was to stretch his entire body, and then he went up to Rocinante, slapped him twice on the haunches, and said:

“I still hope to God and His Blessed Mother, O flower and paragon of horses, that we soon shall see ourselves as we wish to be: you, with your master on your back, and I, mounted on you and exercising the profession for which God put me in this world.”

And having said this, Don Quixote moved away with Sancho to a remote spot and returned much relieved and even more desirous of putting his squire’s plan into effect.

The canon looked at him, marveling at the strangeness of his profound madness and at how he displayed a very fine intelligence when he spoke and responded to questions, his feet slipping from the stirrups, as has been said many times before, only when the subject was chivalry. And so, after everyone had sat on the green grass to wait for the provisions, the canon, moved by compassion, said to him:

“Is it possible, Señor, that the grievous and idle reading of books of chivalry could have so affected your grace that it has unbalanced your judgment and made you believe that you are enchanted, along with other things of this nature, which are as far from being true as truth is from lies? How is it possible that any human mind could be persuaded that there has existed in the world that infinity of Amadises, and that throng of so many famous knights, so many emperors of Trebizond, so many Felixmartes of Hyrcania, so many palfreys and wandering damsels, so many serpents and dragons and giants, so many unparalleled adventures and different kinds of enchantments, so many battles and fierce encounters, so much splendid attire, so many enamored princesses and squires who are counts and dwarves who are charming, so many love letters, so much wooing, so many valiant women, and, finally, so many nonsensical matters as are contained in books of chivalry? For myself, I can say that when I read them, as long as I do not set my mind to thinking that they are all frivolous lies, I do derive some pleasure from them, but when I realize what they actually are, I throw even the best of them against the wall, and would even toss them in the fire if one were near, and think they richly deserved the punishment, for being deceptive and false and far beyond the limits of common sense, like the founders of new sects and new ways of life, and for giving the ignorant rabble a reason to believe and consider as true all the absurdities they contain.

They are so audacious, they dare perturb the minds of judicious and wellborn gentlemen, as can be plainly seen in what they have done to
your grace, for they have brought you to the point where it has been necessary to lock you in a cage and carry you on an oxcart as if you were a lion or tiger being transported from town to town so that people could pay to see you. Come, come, Señor Don Quixote, take pity on yourself! Return to the bosom of good sense, and learn to use the considerable intelligence that heaven was pleased to give you, and devote your intellectual talents to another kind of reading that redounds to the benefit of your conscience and the increase of your honor! And if, following your natural inclination, you still wish to read books about great chivalric deeds, read Judges in Holy Scripture, and there you will find magnificent truths and deeds both remarkable and real. Lusitania had a Viriato,
¹
Rome had a Caesar, Carthage a Hannibal, Greece an Alexander, Castilla a Count Fernán González,
²
Valencia a Cid, Andalucía a Gonzalo Fernández,
³
Extremadura a Diego García de Paredes,
⁴
Jerez a Garcí Pérez de Vargas,
⁵
Toledo a Garcilaso,
⁶
Sevilla a Don Manuel de León.
⁷
Reading about their valorous deeds can entertain, instruct, delight, and astonish the highest minds. This would certainly be a study worthy of your grace’s intelligence, Señor Don Quixote, and from it you would emerge learned in history, enamored of virtue, instructed in goodness, improved in your customs, valiant but not rash, bold and not cowardly, and all of this would honor God, and benefit you, and add to the fame of La Mancha where, I have learned, your grace has his origin and birthplace.”

Don Quixote listened very attentively to the canon’s words, and when he saw that he had concluded, he looked at him for a long time and said:

“It seems to me, Señor, that the intention of your grace’s discourse has been to persuade me that there have been no knights errant in the
world, and that all the books of chivalry are false, untrue, harmful, and of no value to the nation, and that I have done wrong to read them, and worse to believe them, and worse yet to imitate them by setting myself the task of following the extremely difficult profession of knight errantry which they teach, and you deny that there ever were Amadises in the world, whether of Gaul or of Greece, or any of the other knights that fill the writings.”

“That is precisely what I meant; what you have said is absolutely correct,” said the canon.

To which Don Quixote responded:

“Your grace also said that these books have done me a good deal of harm, for they turned my wits and put me in a cage, and it would be better for me to alter and change my reading and devote myself to books that are truer and more pleasant and more instructive.”

“That is true,” said the canon.

“Well, then,” replied Don Quixote, “it is my opinion that the one who is deranged and enchanted is your grace, for you have uttered so many blasphemies against something so widely accepted in the world as true that whoever denies it, as your grace has done, deserves the same punishment that your grace says you give to books when you read them and they anger you. Because wanting to convince anyone that there was no Amadís in the world or any of the adventuring knights who fill the histories, is the same as trying to persuade that person that the sun does not shine, ice is not cold, and the earth bears no crops, for what mind in the world can persuade another that the story of Princess Floripes and Guy de Bourgogne is not true, or the tale of Fierabrás and the Bridge of Mantible, which occurred in the time of Charlemagne, and is as true as the fact that it is now day?
⁸
If that is a lie, it must also be true that there was no Hector, no Achilles, no Trojan War, no Twelve Peers of France, no King Arthur of England who was transformed into a crow and whose return is awaited in his kingdom to this day. Who will go so far as to say that the history of Guarino Mezquino is false,
⁹
and the search for the Holy Grail, and that the loves of Don Tristan and Queen Iseult, and those of Guinevere and Lancelot, are apocryphal, even though there are
persons who can almost remember having seen the Duenna Quintañona,
¹⁰
who was the greatest pourer of wine in Great Britain? And this is so true that I remember my paternal grandmother saying, whenever she saw a lady with a formal headdress: ‘My boy, she looks like the Duenna Quintañona.’ And from this I argue that she must have known her, or at least seen a portrait of her. And who can deny the truth of the history of Pierres and the beautiful Magalona,
¹¹
for even today one can see in the royal armory the peg, slightly larger than a carriage pole, with which the valiant Pierres directed the wooden horse as he rode it through the air. And next to the peg is the saddle of Babieca, and at Roncesvalles there is Roland’s horn, the size of a large rafter, from which one can infer that there were Twelve Peers, and a Pierres, and a Cid, and other knights like them:

If you deny that, you will also tell me it is not true that the valiant Lusitanian Juan de Merlo
¹³
was a knight errant who went to Burgundy and fought at the city of Arras with the famous Lord of Charny, called Monseigneur Pierres, and then in the city of Basle with Monseigneur Henri de Remestan, emerging from both undertakings victorious and covered with honor and fame; you will deny the adventures and challenges, also carried out in Burgundy, by the valiant Spaniards Pedro Barba and Gutierre Quijada
¹⁴
(from whom I am descended directly through the male line), when they conquered the sons of the Count of San Polo. You will deny as well that Don Fernando de Guevara
¹⁵
went to seek adventures in Germany, where he fought with Messire Jorge, a knight in the house of the Duke of Austria; you will say that the jousts of Suero de Quiñones at the Pass were a deception,
¹⁶
and you will deny the feats of Monseigneur Luis de Falces against Don Gonzalo de Guzmán, a
Castilian knight,
¹⁷
as well as many other deeds performed by Christian knights from these kingdoms and from foreign ones, deeds so authentic and true that I say again that whoever denies them must be lacking in all reason and good sense.”

The canon was astonished when he heard Don Quixote’s mixture of truth and falsehood and saw how well-informed he was regarding everything related to and touching on the exploits of knight errantry, and so he responded:

“I cannot deny, Señor Don Quixote, that some of what your grace has said is true, especially with regard to Spanish knights errant; by the same token, I also wish to concede that there were Twelve Peers of France, though I cannot believe they did all those things that Archbishop Turpin writes about them,
¹⁸
because the truth of the matter is that they were knights chosen by the kings of France and were called
peers
because they were all equal in worth, nobility, and valor, or at least, if they were not, they should have been; they were like a religious order, similar to the modern orders of Santiago or Calatrava, in which one supposes that those who profess are, or should be, worthy, valiant, and wellborn knights, and just as today one calls a man a Knight of San Juan, or a Knight of Alcántara, in those days one said a Knight of the Twelve Peers, because they were twelve equal knights selected for this military order. As for El Cid, there can be no doubt that he existed, and certainly none about Bernardo del Carpio, but I think it exceedingly doubtful that they performed the deeds people say they did. With regard to the peg of Count Pierres which you mentioned as being next to the saddle of Babieca in the royal armory, I confess my sin: I am so ignorant, or so shortsighted, that although I have seen the saddle, I have never laid eyes on the peg, especially if it is as big as your grace says it is.”

“Well, it is there, no doubt about it,” replied Don Quixote, “and they also say it is kept in a cowhide sheath to protect it from rust.”

“That well may be,” responded the canon, “but by the orders I received, I do not remember seeing it. And even if I concede that it is there, I am not therefore obliged to believe the histories of so many Amadises, or those of that throng of knights about whom they tell us stories, nor is it reasonable for an honorable man like your grace, possessed of your qualities and fine understanding, to accept as true the countless absurd exaggerations that are written in those nonsensical books of chivalry.”

CHAPTER L