The Story of Don Quixote Part 14

CHAPTER VII

OF WHAT Pa.s.sED BETWEEN DON QUIXOTE AND HIS SQUIRE, TOGETHER WITH OTHER VERY NOTABLE INCIDENTS

As soon as the housekeeper heard Don Quixote turn the key in the door, she realized the urgency of the situation, put on her shawl, and ran to the house of the bachelor Samson Carrasco. She knew that her master had taken a fancy to this learned young man and thought he might be able to persuade him to give up the crazy idea. She fell on her knees before Samson and told him in excited language that her master had broken out again.

"Where is he breaking out?" asked the roguish bachelor.

"He is breaking out at the door of his madness," replied the bewildered housekeeper. "I mean he is going to break out again, for the third time, to hunt all over the world for what he calls adventures."

And then she went on to say that his first sally ended in his being brought back home, slung across the back of a donkey. The second time he made his entry into the village in an ox-cart, shut up in a cage, and looking so worn and emaciated that his own mother would not have known him. The last escapade had been an extremely expensive one, for it had taken no less than six hundred eggs to cover up his bones again.

The bachelor quieted the housekeeper, and promised her to do all he could for her master. Then he advised her to return home and prepare something hot for breakfast, and on her way home to repeat the prayer of Santa Appolonia. He himself would be there in time for breakfast, he said. The housekeeper remonstrated with the bachelor for prescribing the prayer of Santa Appolonia, which, she declared, was for toothache and not for brains; but Samson told her to do as he bade her, reminding her that he was a learned bachelor of Salamanca and knew what he was talking about. The housekeeper then left, saying her prayer, and the bachelor went to look for the curate that they might decide what to do.

In the meantime Don Quixote and Sancho were discussing what the future was holding for them, and Sancho gave the glad news to his master that he had induced his wife to sanction his departure and his becoming governor. Sancho was very much annoyed by his master's continual interruptions and corrections. Whenever Sancho would misuse or abuse a word, as he did in almost every sentence, Don Quixote would stop and ask him what he meant, until poor Sancho was so confused that he did not know what he had meant. Finally Don Quixote asked him to tell him all that his wife had said, and as soon as Sancho had a chance to use proverbs again, he felt more at home. "Teresa says," he repeated, "that I should make sure with your Worship, and let papers speak and beards be still. One _take_ is better than two _I'll give thee's_."

"And so say I," said Don Quixote. "Continue, Sancho my friend. Go on; thou talkest 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. The lamb goes as soon as the sheep, and n.o.body can promise himself more hours of life in this world than G.o.d may be pleased to give him; for death is deaf, and when it comes to knock at our life's door, it is always insistent, and neither prayers, nor struggles, nor scepters, nor miters, can keep it back, as they tell us from the pulpits every day."

Here Don Quixote felt he ought to ask a question. "Sancho," said he, "all that is true; but what art thou driving at?"

And then came the reason for all these long-winded preliminaries.

Sancho wanted his master to make definite arrangements with him for compensation. But here was the drawback. Don Quixote could recall no incident in any of the many books he had read, when a knight errant had given his squire fixed wages. How could he possibly establish a precedent now? And so it became his sad and solemn duty to refuse his squire's miserly request, and inform him that his services were no longer wanted. Not only that, but our valiant hero was cruel enough to remark that there would be any number of people who would be only too eager to serve him; and, what was more, he was convinced that no one could be less careful and diligent, or more thick-headed and talkative than Sancho.

Poor Sancho stood thunderstruck. He had expected his master would address him in a much more gracious manner; and had taken for granted that his own person was indispensable to his master. As he stood there gaping in amazement, the bachelor, Samson, suddenly entered, followed by the niece and the housekeeper. Samson threw himself on his knees before the knight, pa.s.sionately declaiming:

"O flower of knight-errantry! O shining light of arms! O honor and mirror of the Spanish nation! May G.o.d Almighty 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!"

Then he rose and turned to the housekeeper, who was distressed and astonished beyond words, telling her it was no use gainsaying her master; that he had made up his mind, and no Santa Appolonia or any other prayer would cause him to change it. Whereupon he addressed Don Quixote again in the same lofty way, and slyly asked him whether he would deign to accept him as his squire or as his meanest servant.

Sancho's eyes nearly bulged out of his head at this, and filled with tears. Fearing that he might lose both his master and his island, he embraced Don Quixote's knees and kissed his hand, begging Don Quixote not to give him up. Then he began to plead with him to leave the village at once. Don Quixote, having taken the squire into his fold again, embraced him, and then conferred with the bachelor and decided that they would set out three days hence. Samson promised to obtain a helmet for Don Quixote before the departure.

In the meantime the bachelor had daily conferences with the curate and the barber. The niece and the housekeeper were cursing the evil and learned bachelor of Salamanca, and hardly slept at night for fear that Don Quixote would steal away in the darkness.

Finally the night of the third day arrived, and Don Quixote and Sancho, accompanied by Samson, quietly and secretly stole out of the village, in the direction of El Toboso. When they had ridden half a league, Samson wished the knight errant G.o.dspeed, embraced him tenderly, begged him to let him hear of his good fortune, and then he returned to the village.

CHAPTER VIII

WHEREIN IS RELATED WHAT BEFELL DON QUIXOTE ON HIS WAY TO SEE HIS LADY DULCINEA DEL TOBOSO

Scarcely had Samson departed before Rocinante began to neigh, and Dapple, Sancho's donkey, to bray; and these animal expressions, considering the time, and the road they were taking, were interpreted by their respective masters to be omens of good luck. But it so happened that Dapple kept up his braying. As a matter of fact he brayed so much louder than the emaciated Rocinante could neigh that the superst.i.tious Sancho took it for a sign that his own good fortune would be ever so much greater than that of his master, though he was considerate enough to say nothing about it to him.

Night soon began to fall, and the conversation between master and squire turned to Don Quixote's incomparable love, whom he had never seen in the flesh, and to whose abode he was now making this pilgrimage in the dark, that he might be blessed by her before going into new battles.

Sancho was beginning to worry that his imagination, with which he was not overburdened, would give out; for with every new question of his master's he had to give a fresh answer, and he was in a deadly fear that Don Quixote might discover that he had never been at El Toboso with the letter to his Lady Dulcinea. Again Don Quixote asked his squire to repeat how he had been received when he had brought her the message of his master's penance in the wilderness, but it infuriated him that Sancho should insist on her having been sifting wheat instead of pearls on that occasion. The courtyard wall mentioned by his squire must, of course, have been a portico, or corridor, or gallery of some rich and royal palace, only Sancho's language was so limited he could not express himself or describe things properly. Or perhaps that infernal enchanter had been busy again, and made things appear in different shapes before his squire's eyes.

What his master said made Sancho's thought suddenly turn to the book which the bachelor Samson had spoken of, and he began to worry that some enchanter might have misrepresented his true character in its pages. He felt it his place and duty to defend himself aloud against any such evil; and having his master as audience, he proceeded to carry out this thought, which, however, he abandoned towards the end in favor of a careless independence: "But let them say what they like; naked was I born, naked I find myself. I neither lose nor gain. When I see myself put into a book and pa.s.sed on from hand to hand all over the world, I don't care a fig. Let them say what they like of me!"

Perhaps what Sancho had just said made Don Quixote's thoughts drift out into the world, which was now being stirred by the accounts of his greatness, for he fell into contemplation on all the tombs and monuments to the great men of past ages. He touched upon the tombs of some who had become saints, when suddenly Sancho shot this question to him out of a clear sky: "Tell me, which is the greater work, to bring a dead man to life or to kill a giant?"

Don Quixote was dumfounded by his squire's suddenness, but replied: "The answer is easy. It is a greater work to bring to life a dead man."

"Now I have got you!" Sancho exclaimed. Then he divulged his longing, which he wanted his master to share, to become a saint; viewing a saint's life from all sides, he had come to the conclusion that it was a much more peaceful life than that of a roving knight errant, who had to be up at all hours and out in all sorts of weather.

But his master answered laconically: "We cannot all be friars." And then he went on to say that the number of knights errant in the world, deserving that name, was a very small one; that, as a matter of truth, knight-errantry, was a religion. But Sancho, stubborn as usual, insisted that there were more friars in heaven than knights errant. In this way they pa.s.sed that night and the following day, without any trace of excitement or adventure.

Finally, at daybreak on the second day, they approached the great city of El Toboso; and Sancho's worries increased as they came closer to the place where the heart of the peerless Dulcinea was beating--for what was he going to say or do when his master wanted to meet his beloved one? Don Quixote decided to await dusk before entering the city, and they spent the day resting in the shade of some oak-trees outside the town.

CHAPTER IX

WHEREIN IS RELATED WHAT WILL BE SEEN THERE

It was midnight when they rode into El Toboso. It was a very dark night, so Sancho could not be blamed for not finding the house in the darkness. They were greeted by a mult.i.tude of noises: barking dogs, braying a.s.ses, mewing cats, and grunting pigs; noises that seemed like an ill omen to Don Quixote. He suddenly turned to Sancho and said: "Sancho, my son, lead on to the place of Dulcinea. It may be that we shall find her awake."

"Body of the sun! What palace am I to lead to, when what I saw Her Highness in was only a very little house?" exclaimed the squire.

"Most likely she had then withdrawn into some small apartment of her palace," said Don Quixote, "to amuse herself with her damsels, as great ladies and princesses are accustomed to do."

Here Sancho told his master to have it his own way, but asked him whether he thought it in conformity with the behavior of a gentleman to go around in the middle of the night knocking at people's doors.

Don Quixote dispensed with the discussion of this particular point; all he wanted to do, he said, was to find the house. Then they could discuss how to proceed. So they roamed about the city, Don Quixote insisting that first one house and then another was the palace of his love, until they finally hit upon the great tower of the church. At last he had found it, he declared. Here was where she dwelt, he was quite sure.

But Sancho, hearing this and seeing it was a church, began to feel ill at ease, for his superst.i.tious soul did not like the idea of walking across a graveyard at such an hour of the night. He quickly told his master, he was now certain that the Lady Dulcinea lived in an alley, a kind thought which was rewarded by a fierce outburst from Don Quixote.

"The curse of G.o.d on thee for a blockhead!" he exclaimed. "Where hast thou ever heard of castles and royal palaces being built in alleys?"

"I wish I saw the dogs eating it for leading us such a dance," was all that Sancho said in reply.

But evidently this was not a pleasing answer to Don Quixote, for he admonished his squire: "Speak respectfully of what belongs to my lady; let us keep the feast in peace, and not throw the rope after the bucket!"

Sancho muttered something about how he could be expected to find, in the dark of night, a house he had only seen once in his lifetime, when his master, who must have seen it hundreds of times, could not recognize it. To this his master retorted wearily that he had told him a thousand times that he was enamored only by hearsay, and had never visited Dulcinea in her palace.

At this moment a laborer on his way to his work came along on the road, singing a dreary song. It was only another omen to Don Quixote that his efforts to approach his lady would not be crowned with success that night. He asked the man to direct him to the palace of his princess, but the laborer turned out to be a stranger, having only just come to the city.

Don Quixote was grieved that he could not find Dulcinea, and when Sancho suggested that they withdraw from the city and develop a plan for seeing her, he was ready to accept it. So they left El Toboso and hid in a forest nearby. There it was decided that Sancho should return to the city as the messenger of love for his master.