PART I - CHAPTER I.

by Miguel de Cervantes

　　WHICH TREATS OF THE CHARACTER AND PURSUITS OF THE FAMOUS GENTLEMAN DONQUIXOTE OF LA MANCHAIn a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call tomind, there lived not long since one of those gentlemen that keep a lancein the lance-rack, an old buckler, a lean hack, and a greyhound forcoursing. An olla of rather more beef than mutton, a salad on mostnights, scraps on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, and a pigeon or so extraon Sundays, made away with three-quarters of his income. The rest of itwent in a doublet of fine cloth and velvet breeches and shoes to matchfor holidays, while on week-days he made a brave figure in his besthomespun. He had in his house a housekeeper past forty, a niece undertwenty, and a lad for the field and market-place, who used to saddle thehack as well as handle the bill-hook. The age of this gentleman of ourswas bordering on fifty; he was of a hardy habit, spare, gaunt-featured, avery early riser and a great sportsman. They will have it his surname wasQuixada or Quesada (for here there is some difference of opinion amongthe authors who write on the subject), although from reasonableconjectures it seems plain that he was called Quexana. This, however, isof but little importance to our tale; it will be enough not to stray ahair's breadth from the truth in the telling of it.You must know, then, that the above-named gentleman whenever he was atleisure (which was mostly all the year round) gave himself up to readingbooks of chivalry with such ardour and avidity that he almost entirelyneglected the pursuit of his field-sports, and even the management of hisproperty; and to such a pitch did his eagerness and infatuation go thathe sold many an acre of tillageland to buy books of chivalry to read, andbrought home as many of them as he could get. But of all there were nonehe liked so well as those of the famous Feliciano de Silva's composition,for their lucidity of style and complicated conceits were as pearls inhis sight, particularly when in his reading he came upon courtships andcartels, where he often found passages like "the reason of the unreasonwith which my reason is afflicted so weakens my reason that with reason Imurmur at your beauty;" or again, "the high heavens, that of yourdivinity divinely fortify you with the stars, render you deserving of thedesert your greatness deserves." Over conceits of this sort the poorgentleman lost his wits, and used to lie awake striving to understandthem and worm the meaning out of them; what Aristotle himself could nothave made out or extracted had he come to life again for that specialpurpose. He was not at all easy about the wounds which Don Belianis gaveand took, because it seemed to him that, great as were the surgeons whohad cured him, he must have had his face and body covered all over withseams and scars. He commended, however, the author's way of ending hisbook with the promise of that interminable adventure, and many a time washe tempted to take up his pen and finish it properly as is thereproposed, which no doubt he would have done, and made a successful pieceof work of it too, had not greater and more absorbing thoughts preventedhim.Many an argument did he have with the curate of his village (a learnedman, and a graduate of Siguenza) as to which had been the better knight,Palmerin of England or Amadis of Gaul. Master Nicholas, the villagebarber, however, used to say that neither of them came up to the Knightof Phoebus, and that if there was any that could compare with him it wasDon Galaor, the brother of Amadis of Gaul, because he had a spirit thatwas equal to every occasion, and was no finikin knight, nor lachrymoselike his brother, while in the matter of valour he was not a whit behindhim. In short, he became so absorbed in his books that he spent hisnights from sunset to sunrise, and his days from dawn to dark, poringover them; and what with little sleep and much reading his brains got sodry that he lost his wits. His fancy grew full of what he used to readabout in his books, enchantments, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds,wooings, loves, agonies, and all sorts of impossible nonsense; and it sopossessed his mind that the whole fabric of invention and fancy he readof was true, that to him no history in the world had more reality in it.He used to say the Cid Ruy Diaz was a very good knight, but that he wasnot to be compared with the Knight of the Burning Sword who with oneback-stroke cut in half two fierce and monstrous giants. He thought moreof Bernardo del Carpio because at Roncesvalles he slew Roland in spite ofenchantments, availing himself of the artifice of Hercules when hestrangled Antaeus the son of Terra in his arms. He approved highly of thegiant Morgante, because, although of the giant breed which is alwaysarrogant and ill-conditioned, he alone was affable and well-bred. Butabove all he admired Reinaldos of Montalban, especially when he saw himsallying forth from his castle and robbing everyone he met, and whenbeyond the seas he stole that image of Mahomet which, as his historysays, was entirely of gold. To have a bout of kicking at that traitor ofa Ganelon he would have given his housekeeper, and his niece into thebargain.In short, his wits being quite gone, he hit upon the strangest notionthat ever madman in this world hit upon, and that was that he fancied itwas right and requisite, as well for the support of his own honour as forthe service of his country, that he should make a knight-errant ofhimself, roaming the world over in full armour and on horseback in questof adventures, and putting in practice himself all that he had read of asbeing the usual practices of knights-errant; righting every kind ofwrong, and exposing himself to peril and danger from which, in the issue,he was to reap eternal renown and fame. Already the poor man saw himselfcrowned by the might of his arm Emperor of Trebizond at least; and so,led away by the intense enjoyment he found in these pleasant fancies, heset himself forthwith to put his scheme into execution.The first thing he did was to clean up some armour that had belonged tohis great-grandfather, and had been for ages lying forgotten in a cornereaten with rust and covered with mildew. He scoured and polished it asbest he could, but he perceived one great defect in it, that it had noclosed helmet, nothing but a simple morion. This deficiency, however, hisingenuity supplied, for he contrived a kind of half-helmet of pasteboardwhich, fitted on to the morion, looked like a whole one. It is true that,in order to see if it was strong and fit to stand a cut, he drew hissword and gave it a couple of slashes, the first of which undid in aninstant what had taken him a week to do. The ease with which he hadknocked it to pieces disconcerted him somewhat, and to guard against thatdanger he set to work again, fixing bars of iron on the inside until hewas satisfied with its strength; and then, not caring to try any moreexperiments with it, he passed it and adopted it as a helmet of the mostperfect construction.He next proceeded to inspect his hack, which, with more quartos than areal and more blemishes than the steed of Gonela, that "tantum pellis etossa fuit," surpassed in his eyes the Bucephalus of Alexander or theBabieca of the Cid. Four days were spent in thinking what name to givehim, because (as he said to himself) it was not right that a horsebelonging to a knight so famous, and one with such merits of his own,should be without some distinctive name, and he strove to adapt it so asto indicate what he had been before belonging to a knight-errant, andwhat he then was; for it was only reasonable that, his master taking anew character, he should take a new name, and that it should be adistinguished and full-sounding one, befitting the new order and callinghe was about to follow. And so, after having composed, struck out,rejected, added to, unmade, and remade a multitude of names out of hismemory and fancy, he decided upon calling him Rocinante, a name, to histhinking, lofty, sonorous, and significant of his condition as a hackbefore he became what he now was, the first and foremost of all the hacksin the world.Having got a name for his horse so much to his taste, he was anxious toget one for himself, and he was eight days more pondering over thispoint, till at last he made up his mind to call himself "Don Quixote,"whence, as has been already said, the authors of this veracious historyhave inferred that his name must have been beyond a doubt Quixada, andnot Quesada as others would have it. Recollecting, however, that thevaliant Amadis was not content to call himself curtly Amadis and nothingmore, but added the name of his kingdom and country to make it famous,and called himself Amadis of Gaul, he, like a good knight, resolved toadd on the name of his, and to style himself Don Quixote of La Mancha,whereby, he considered, he described accurately his origin and country,and did honour to it in taking his surname from it.So then, his armour being furbished, his morion turned into a helmet, hishack christened, and he himself confirmed, he came to the conclusion thatnothing more was needed now but to look out for a lady to be in lovewith; for a knight-errant without love was like a tree without leaves orfruit, or a body without a soul. As he said to himself, "If, for my sins,or by my good fortune, I come across some giant hereabouts, a commonoccurrence with knights-errant, and overthrow him in one onslaught, orcleave him asunder to the waist, or, in short, vanquish and subdue him,will it not be well to have some one I may send him to as a present, thathe may come in and fall on his knees before my sweet lady, and in ahumble, submissive voice say, 'I am the giant Caraculiambro, lord of theisland of Malindrania, vanquished in single combat by the neversufficiently extolled knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, who has commandedme to present myself before your Grace, that your Highness dispose of meat your pleasure'?" Oh, how our good gentleman enjoyed the delivery ofthis speech, especially when he had thought of some one to call his Lady!There was, so the story goes, in a village near his own a verygood-looking farm-girl with whom he had been at one time in love, though,so far as is known, she never knew it nor gave a thought to the matter.Her name was Aldonza Lorenzo, and upon her he thought fit to confer thetitle of Lady of his Thoughts; and after some search for a name whichshould not be out of harmony with her own, and should suggest andindicate that of a princess and great lady, he decided upon calling herDulcinea del Toboso--she being of El Toboso--a name, to his mind,musical, uncommon, and significant, like all those he had alreadybestowed upon himself and the things belonging to him.