_Don Quixote's answer to his reprover; with other grave and merry
accidents._
Don Quixote having thus suddenly got up, with his whole frame agitated
with indignation, cast an angry look on his indiscreet censor, and
thus spake: "This place, the presence of these noble persons, and the
respect I have always had for your function, check my just resentment,
and tie up my hands from taking the satisfaction of a gentleman. For
these reasons, and since every one knows that you gown-men, as well as
women, use no other weapons but your tongues, I will fairly engage you
upon equal terms, and combat you at your own weapon. I should rather
have expected sober admonitions from a man of your cloth, than
infamous reproaches. Charitable and wholesome correction ought to be
managed at another rate, and with more moderation. The least that can
be said of this reproof, which you have given me here so bitterly and
in public, is, that it has exceeded the bounds of Christian
correction, and a gentle one had been much more becoming. Is it fit
that without any insight into the offence which you reprove, you
should, without any more ado, call the offender fool, sot, and
addlepate? Pray, sir, what foolish action have you seen me do, that
should provoke you to give me such ill language, and bid me so
magisterially go home to look after my wife and children, before you
know whether I have any? Don't you think those deserve as severe a
censure who screw themselves into other men's houses, and pretend to
rule the master? A fine world it is truly, when a poor pedant, who has
seen no more of it than lies within twenty or thirty leagues about
him, shall take upon him to prescribe laws to knight-errantry, and
judge of those who profess it! You, forsooth, esteem it an idle
undertaking, and time lost, to wander through the world, though
scorning its pleasures and sharing the hardships and toils of it, by
which the virtuous aspire to the high seat of immortality. If persons
of honour, knights, lords, gentlemen, or men of any birth, should take
me for a fool or a coxcomb, I should think it an irreparable affront.
But for mere scholars, that never trode the path of chivalry, to think
me mad, I despise and laugh at it. I am a knight, and a knight will I
die, if so it please Omnipotence. Some choose the high road of haughty
ambition; others the low ways of base servile flattery; a third sort
take the crooked path of deceitful hypocrisy; and a few, very few,
that of true religion. I, for my own part, follow the narrow track of
knight-errantry; and for the exercise of it I despise riches, but not
honour. I have redressed grievances, and righted the injured,
chastised the insolent, vanquished giants, and trod elves and
hobgoblins under my feet. I am in love, but no more than the
profession of knight-errantry obliges me to be. My intentions are all
directed to virtuous ends, and to do no man wrong, but good to all the
world. And now let your graces judge, most excellent duke and duchess,
whether a person who makes it his only study to practise all this
deserves to be upbraided for a fool."
"Well said, truly," quoth Sancho; "say no more for yourself, my good
lord and master; stop when you are well; for there is not the least
matter to be added more on your side. Besides, since Mr. Parson has
had the face to say, point-blank, as one may say, that there neither
are, nor ever were, any knights-errant in the world, no marvel he does
not know what he says." "What!" said the clergyman, "I warrant you are
that Sancho Panza to whom they say your master has promised an
island?" "Ay, marry am I," answered Sancho; "and I am he that deserves
it as well as another body; and I am one of those of whom they say,
'Keep with good men and thou shalt be one of them;' and of those of
whom it is said again, 'Not with whom thou wert bred, but with whom
thou hast fed;' as also, 'Lean against a good tree, and it will
shelter thee.' I have leaned and stuck close to my good master, and
kept him company this many a month; and now he and I are all one; and
I must be as he is; and so he live, and I live, he will not want
kingdoms to rule, nor shall I want islands to govern."
"That thou shalt not, honest Sancho," said the duke; "for I, on the
great Don Quixote's account, will now give thee the government of an
odd one of my own of no small consequence." "Down, down on thy knees,
Sancho," cried Don Quixote, "and kiss his grace's feet for this
favour." Sancho did accordingly; but when the clergyman saw it, he got
up in a great heat. "By the habit which I wear," cried he, "I can
scarce forbear telling your grace, that you are as mad as these sinful
wretches. Well may they be mad, when such wise men as you humour and
authorise their frenzy. You may keep them here, and stay with them
yourself, if your grace pleases; but for my part, I will leave you and
go home, to save myself the labour of reprehending what I can't mend."
With that, leaving the rest of his dinner behind him, away he flung,
the duke and the duchess not being able to pacify him; though, indeed,
the duke could not say much to him for laughing at his impertinent
passion.
When he had done laughing, "Sir Knight of the Lions," said he, "you
have answered so well, that you need no farther satisfaction of the
angry clergyman; especially if you consider that whatever he might
say, it was not in his power to fix an affront on a person of your
character, since women and churchmen cannot give an affront." "Very
true, my lord," said Don Quixote; "and I ought not to have any
resentment for what that good man said, neither, indeed, have I any. I
only wish he would have stayed a little longer, that I might have
convinced him of his error in believing there were never any
knights-errant in the world. Had Amadis, or any one of his innumerable
race, but heard him say any thing like this, I can assure his
reverence it would have gone hard with him."
"I will answer for it, it would," quoth Sancho; "they would have
undone him as you would undo an oyster, and have cleft him from head
to foot as one would slice a pomegranate, or a ripe muskmelon. They
were a parcel of tough blades, and would not have swallowed such a
pill. I verily believe, had Rinaldo of Montalban but heard the poor
man talk at this rate, he would have given him such a gag as would
have secured him from prating these three years. Ay, ay, if he had
fallen into their clutches, see how he would have got out again." The
duchess was ready to die with laughing at Sancho, whom she thought a
more pleasant fool and a greater madman than his master; and she was
not the only person at that time of this opinion.
The duchess now took an opportunity to desire the knight to give a
particular description of the Lady Dulcinea del Toboso's beauty and
accomplishments, not doubting but that his good memory would enable
him to do it well; adding withal, that according to the voice of
fame, she must needs be the finest creature in the whole world, and
consequently in La Mancha.
With that, Don Quixote, fetching a deep sigh, "Madam," said he, "could
I pluck out my heart, and expose it to your grace's view, I might save
my tongue the labour of attempting that which it cannot express, and
you can scarce believe; for there your grace would see her beauty
depainted to the life. But why should I undertake to delineate and
copy one by one each several perfection of the peerless Dulcinea? That
task were worthy of the pencils of Parrhasius, Timantes, and Apelles,
or the graving-tools of Lysippus. The hands of the best painters and
statuaries should indeed be employed to give in speaking paint, in
marble and Corinthian brass, an exact copy of her beauties; while
Ciceronian and Demosthenian eloquence laboured to reach the praise of
her endowments." "Pray, sir," asked the duchess, "what do you mean by
that word Demosthenian?" "Demosthenian eloquence, madam," said Don
Quixote, "is as much as to say, the eloquence of Demosthenes; and the
Ciceronian, that of Cicero; the two greatest orators that ever were in
the world." "It is true," said the duke; "and you but shewed your
ignorance, my dear, in asking such a question. Yet the noble Don
Quixote would highly oblige us, if he would but be pleased to attempt
her picture now; for even in a rude draught of her lineaments, I
question not but she will appear so charming, as to deserve the envy
of the brightest of her sex." "Ah, my lord," said Don Quixote, "it
would be so indeed, if the misfortune which not long since befell her
had not in a manner razed her idea out of the seat of my memory; and
as it is, I ought rather to bewail her change than describe her
person: for your grace must know that as I lately went to kiss her
hands, and obtain her benediction and leave for my intended absence in
quest of new adventures, I found her quite another creature than I
expected. I found her enchanted--transformed from a princess to a
country-wench, from beauty to ugliness, from courtliness to rusticity,
from a reserved lady to a jumping Joan; in short, from Dulcinea del
Toboso to a peasantess of Sayago." "Bless us!" cried the duke with a
loud voice, "what villain has done the world such an injury? Who has
robbed it not only of the beauty that was its ornament, but of those
charming graces that were its delight, and that virtue which was its
living honour?" "Who should it be," replied Don Quixote, "but one of
those cursed magicians who have persecuted me, and will continue to do
so, till they have sunk me and my lofty deeds of chivalry into the
profound abyss of oblivion. Yes, they wound me in that part which they
well know is most sensible; aware, that to deprive a knight-errant of
his lady, is to rob him of the eyes with which he sees, of the sun
that enlightens him, and of the food that sustains him. For, as I have
often said, a knight-errant without a lady is like a tree without
leaves, a building without mortar, or a shadow without a body that
causes it."
"I grant all this," said the duchess; "yet if we may believe the
history of your life, which was lately published with universal
applause, it seems to imply, to the best of my remembrance, that you
never saw the Lady Dulcinea, and that there is no such lady in the
world; but rather that she is a mere notional creature, proceeding
from your own fancy, and there endowed with all the charms and good
qualifications which you are pleased to ascribe to her."
"Much may be said upon this point," said Don Quixote; "Heaven knows
whether there be a Dulcinea in the world or not, and whether she be a
notional creature or not. These are mysteries not to be so narrowly
inquired into. I do indeed make her the object of my contemplations,
and, as I ought, look on her as a lady endowed with all those
qualifications that may raise the character of a person to universal
fame. She is to me beautiful without blemish, reserved without pride,
amorous with modesty, agreeable for her courteous temper, and
courteous as an effect of her generous education, and, in short, of an
illustrious parentage. For beauty displays its lustre to a higher
degree of perfection when joined with noble blood than it can in those
that are meanly descended."
"The observation is just," said the duke; "but give me leave, sir, to
propose to you a doubt, which the reading of that history hath started
in my mind. It is, that, allowing there be a Dulcinea at Toboso, or
elsewhere, and as beautiful as you describe her, yet I do not find she
can any way equal in greatness of birth the Orianas, the
Alastrajareas, the Madasimas, and a thousand others, of whom we read
in those histories with which you have been so conversant." "To this,"
said Don Quixote, "I answer, that Dulcinea is the daughter of her own
actions, and that virtue ennobles the blood. A virtuous man of mean
condition is more to be esteemed than a vicious person of quality.
Besides, Dulcinea is possessed of those other endowments that may
entitle her to crowns and sceptres, since beauty alone has raised many
of her sex to a throne." "I must own, sir," said the duchess, "that in
all your discourse, you, as we say, proceed with the plummet of
reason, and fathom all the depths of controversy. Therefore I submit;
and from this time I am resolved to believe, and will make all my
domestics, nay my husband too, if there be occasion, believe and
maintain, that there is a Dulcinea del Toboso extant, and living at
this day; that she is beautiful and of good extraction; and to sum up
all in a word, altogether deserving the services of so great a knight
as the noble Don Quixote; which I think is the highest commendation I
can bestow on her. But yet I must confess there is still one scruple
that makes me uneasy, and causes me to have an ill opinion of Sancho.
It is that the history tells us, that when Sancho Panza carried your
letter to the Lady Dulcinea, he found her winnowing a sack of corn; by
the same token, that it was the worst sort of wheat, which makes me
much doubt her quality."
"Your grace must know," answered Don Quixote, "that almost every thing
that relates to me is managed quite contrary to what the affairs of
other knights-errant used to be. Whether the unfathomable will of
destiny, or the implacable malice of envious enchanters, orders it so
or no, I cannot tell. But I have good reason to believe that these
magicians, finding they cannot work their wicked ends directly on me,
revenge themselves on what I most esteem, and endeavour to take away
my life by persecuting that of Dulcinea, in whom and for whom I live.
And therefore the unfortunate lady must be thus enchanted, misused,
disfigured, chopped, and changed. My enemies, wreaking their malice on
her, have revenged themselves on me, which makes me abandon myself to
sorrow, till she be restored to her former perfections.
"I have been the more large in this particular, that nobody might
insist on what Sancho said of her sifting of corn; for if she appeared
changed to me, what wonder is it if she seemed so to him? In short,
Dulcinea is both illustrious and well-born, being descended of the
most ancient and best families in Toboso, of whose blood I am positive
she has no small share in her veins; and now that town will be no less
famous in after ages for being the place of her nativity than Troy for
Helen, though on a more honourable account.
"As for Sancho Panza's part, I assure your grace he is one of the most
pleasant squires that ever waited on a knight-errant. Sometimes he
comes out with such sharp simplicities, that one is pleasantly puzzled
to judge whether he be more knave or fool. The varlet, indeed, is full
of roguery enough to be thought a knave; but then he has yet more
ignorance, and may better be thought a fool. He doubts of every thing,
yet believes every thing; and when one would think he had entangled
himself in a piece of downright folly beyond recovery, he brings
himself off of a sudden so cleverly that he is applauded to the skies.
In short, I would not change him for the best squire that wears a
head, though I might have a city to boot; and therefore I do not know
whether I had best let him go to the government which your grace has
been pleased to promise him. Though I must confess his talents seem to
lie pretty much that way; for, give never so little a whet to his
understanding, he will manage his government as well as the king does
his customs. Then experience convinces us that neither learning, nor
any other abilities, are very material to a governor. Have we not a
hundred of them that can scarce read a letter, and yet they govern as
sharp as so many hawks? Their main business is only to mean well, and
to be resolved to do their best; for they cannot want able
counsellors to instruct them. Thus those governors who are men of the
sword, and no scholars, have their assessors on the bench to direct
them. My counsel to Sancho shall be, that he neither take bribes nor
lose his privileges; with some other little instructions, which I have
in my head for him, and which at a proper time I will communicate,
both for his private advantage and the public good of the island he is
to govern."
Here the conversation ceased, and Don Quixote went to take his
afternoon's sleep; but the duchess desired Sancho, if he were not very
sleepy, to pass the afternoon with her and her women in a cool room.
Sancho told her grace, that indeed he did use to take a good sound
nap, some four or five hours long, in a summer's afternoon; but to do
her good honour a kindness, he would break an old custom for once, and
do his best to hold up that day, and wait on her worship.