PART I - CHAPTER XLVII.

by Miguel de Cervantes

　　OF THE STRANGE MANNER IN WHICH DON QUIXOTE OF LA MANCHA WAS CARRIED AWAYENCHANTED, TOGETHER WITH OTHER REMARKABLE INCIDENTSWhen Don Quixote saw himself caged and hoisted on the cart in this way,he said, "Many grave histories of knights-errant have I read; but neveryet have I read, seen, or heard of their carrying off enchantedknights-errant in this fashion, or at the slow pace that these lazy,sluggish animals promise; for they always take them away through the airwith marvellous swiftness, enveloped in a dark thick cloud, or on achariot of fire, or it may be on some hippogriff or other beast of thekind; but to carry me off like this on an ox-cart! By God, it puzzles me!But perhaps the chivalry and enchantments of our day take a differentcourse from that of those in days gone by; and it may be, too, that as Iam a new knight in the world, and the first to revive the alreadyforgotten calling of knight-adventurers, they may have newly inventedother kinds of enchantments and other modes of carrying off theenchanted. What thinkest thou of the matter, Sancho my son?""I don't know what to think," answered Sancho, "not being as well read asyour worship in errant writings; but for all that I venture to say andswear that these apparitions that are about us are not quite catholic.""Catholic!" said Don Quixote. "Father of me! how can they be Catholicwhen they are all devils that have taken fantastic shapes to come and dothis, and bring me to this condition? And if thou wouldst prove it, touchthem, and feel them, and thou wilt find they have only bodies of air, andno consistency except in appearance.""By God, master," returned Sancho, "I have touched them already; and thatdevil, that goes about there so busily, has firm flesh, and anotherproperty very different from what I have heard say devils have, for byall accounts they all smell of brimstone and other bad smells; but thisone smells of amber half a league off." Sancho was here speaking of DonFernando, who, like a gentleman of his rank, was very likely perfumed asSancho said."Marvel not at that, Sancho my friend," said Don Quixote; "for let metell thee devils are crafty; and even if they do carry odours about withthem, they themselves have no smell, because they are spirits; or, ifthey have any smell, they cannot smell of anything sweet, but ofsomething foul and fetid; and the reason is that as they carry hell withthem wherever they go, and can get no ease whatever from their torments,and as a sweet smell is a thing that gives pleasure and enjoyment, it isimpossible that they can smell sweet; if, then, this devil thou speakestof seems to thee to smell of amber, either thou art deceiving thyself, orhe wants to deceive thee by making thee fancy he is not a devil."Such was the conversation that passed between master and man; and DonFernando and Cardenio, apprehensive of Sancho's making a completediscovery of their scheme, towards which he had already gone some way,resolved to hasten their departure, and calling the landlord aside, theydirected him to saddle Rocinante and put the pack-saddle on Sancho's ass,which he did with great alacrity. In the meantime the curate had made anarrangement with the officers that they should bear them company as faras his village, he paying them so much a day. Cardenio hung the buckleron one side of the bow of Rocinante's saddle and the basin on the other,and by signs commanded Sancho to mount his ass and take Rocinante'sbridle, and at each side of the cart he placed two officers with theirmuskets; but before the cart was put in motion, out came the landlady andher daughter and Maritornes to bid Don Quixote farewell, pretending toweep with grief at his misfortune; and to them Don Quixote said:"Weep not, good ladies, for all these mishaps are the lot of those whofollow the profession I profess; and if these reverses did not befall meI should not esteem myself a famous knight-errant; for such things neverhappen to knights of little renown and fame, because nobody in the worldthinks about them; to valiant knights they do, for these are envied fortheir virtue and valour by many princes and other knights who compass thedestruction of the worthy by base means. Nevertheless, virtue is ofherself so mighty, that, in spite of all the magic that Zoroaster itsfirst inventor knew, she will come victorious out of every trial, andshed her light upon the earth as the sun does upon the heavens. Forgiveme, fair ladies, if, through inadvertence, I have in aught offended you;for intentionally and wittingly I have never done so to any; and pray toGod that he deliver me from this captivity to which some malevolentenchanter has consigned me; and should I find myself released therefrom,the favours that ye have bestowed upon me in this castle shall be held inmemory by me, that I may acknowledge, recognise, and requite them as theydeserve."While this was passing between the ladies of the castle and Don Quixote,the curate and the barber bade farewell to Don Fernando and hiscompanions, to the captain, his brother, and the ladies, now all madehappy, and in particular to Dorothea and Luscinda. They all embraced oneanother, and promised to let each other know how things went with them,and Don Fernando directed the curate where to write to him, to tell himwhat became of Don Quixote, assuring him that there was nothing thatcould give him more pleasure than to hear of it, and that he too, on hispart, would send him word of everything he thought he would like to know,about his marriage, Zoraida's baptism, Don Luis's affair, and Luscinda'sreturn to her home. The curate promised to comply with his requestcarefully, and they embraced once more, and renewed their promises.The landlord approached the curate and handed him some papers, saying hehad discovered them in the lining of the valise in which the novel of"The Ill-advised Curiosity" had been found, and that he might take themall away with him as their owner had not since returned; for, as he couldnot read, he did not want them himself. The curate thanked him, andopening them he saw at the beginning of the manuscript the words, "Novelof Rinconete and Cortadillo," by which he perceived that it was a novel,and as that of "The Ill-advised Curiosity" had been good he concludedthis would be so too, as they were both probably by the same author; sohe kept it, intending to read it when he had an opportunity. He thenmounted and his friend the barber did the same, both masked, so as not tobe recognised by Don Quixote, and set out following in the rear of thecart. The order of march was this: first went the cart with the ownerleading it; at each side of it marched the officers of the Brotherhood,as has been said, with their muskets; then followed Sancho Panza on hisass, leading Rocinante by the bridle; and behind all came the curate andthe barber on their mighty mules, with faces covered, as aforesaid, and agrave and serious air, measuring their pace to suit the slow steps of theoxen. Don Quixote was seated in the cage, with his hands tied and hisfeet stretched out, leaning against the bars as silent and as patient asif he were a stone statue and not a man of flesh. Thus slowly andsilently they made, it might be, two leagues, until they reached a valleywhich the carter thought a convenient place for resting and feeding hisoxen, and he said so to the curate, but the barber was of opinion thatthey ought to push on a little farther, as at the other side of a hillwhich appeared close by he knew there was a valley that had more grassand much better than the one where they proposed to halt; and his advicewas taken and they continued their journey.Just at that moment the curate, looking back, saw coming on behind themsix or seven mounted men, well found and equipped, who soon overtookthem, for they were travelling, not at the sluggish, deliberate pace ofoxen, but like men who rode canons' mules, and in haste to take theirnoontide rest as soon as possible at the inn which was in sight not aleague off. The quick travellers came up with the slow, and courteoussalutations were exchanged; and one of the new comers, who was, in fact,a canon of Toledo and master of the others who accompanied him, observingthe regular order of the procession, the cart, the officers, Sancho,Rocinante, the curate and the barber, and above all Don Quixote caged andconfined, could not help asking what was the meaning of carrying the manin that fashion; though, from the badges of the officers, he alreadyconcluded that he must be some desperate highwayman or other malefactorwhose punishment fell within the jurisdiction of the Holy Brotherhood.One of the officers to whom he had put the question, replied, "Let thegentleman himself tell you the meaning of his going this way, senor, forwe do not know."Don Quixote overheard the conversation and said, "Haply, gentlemen, youare versed and learned in matters of errant chivalry? Because if you areI will tell you my misfortunes; if not, there is no good in my givingmyself the trouble of relating them;" but here the curate and the barber,seeing that the travellers were engaged in conversation with Don Quixote,came forward, in order to answer in such a way as to save their stratagemfrom being discovered.The canon, replying to Don Quixote, said, "In truth, brother, I know moreabout books of chivalry than I do about Villalpando's elements of logic;so if that be all, you may safely tell me what you please.""In God's name, then, senor," replied Don Quixote; "if that be so, Iwould have you know that I am held enchanted in this cage by the envy andfraud of wicked enchanters; for virtue is more persecuted by the wickedthan loved by the good. I am a knight-errant, and not one of those whosenames Fame has never thought of immortalising in her record, but of thosewho, in defiance and in spite of envy itself, and all the magicians thatPersia, or Brahmans that India, or Gymnosophists that Ethiopia everproduced, will place their names in the temple of immortality, to serveas examples and patterns for ages to come, whereby knights-errant may seethe footsteps in which they must tread if they would attain the summitand crowning point of honour in arms.""What Senor Don Quixote of La Mancha says," observed the curate, "is thetruth; for he goes enchanted in this cart, not from any fault or sins ofhis, but because of the malevolence of those to whom virtue is odious andvalour hateful. This, senor, is the Knight of the Rueful Countenance, ifyou have ever heard him named, whose valiant achievements and mightydeeds shall be written on lasting brass and imperishable marble,notwithstanding all the efforts of envy to obscure them and malice tohide them."When the canon heard both the prisoner and the man who was at libertytalk in such a strain he was ready to cross himself in his astonishment,and could not make out what had befallen him; and all his attendants werein the same state of amazement.At this point Sancho Panza, who had drawn near to hear the conversation,said, in order to make everything plain, "Well, sirs, you may like ordislike what I am going to say, but the fact of the matter is, my master,Don Quixote, is just as much enchanted as my mother. He is in his fullsenses, he eats and he drinks, and he has his calls like other men and ashe had yesterday, before they caged him. And if that's the case, what dothey mean by wanting me to believe that he is enchanted? For I have heardmany a one say that enchanted people neither eat, nor sleep, nor talk;and my master, if you don't stop him, will talk more than thirtylawyers." Then turning to the curate he exclaimed, "Ah, senor curate,senor curate! do you think I don't know you? Do you think I don't guessand see the drift of these new enchantments? Well then, I can tell you Iknow you, for all your face is covered, and I can tell you I am up toyou, however you may hide your tricks. After all, where envy reignsvirtue cannot live, and where there is niggardliness there can be noliberality. Ill betide the devil! if it had not been for your worship mymaster would be married to the Princess Micomicona this minute, and Ishould be a count at least; for no less was to be expected, as well fromthe goodness of my master, him of the Rueful Countenance, as from thegreatness of my services. But I see now how true it is what they say inthese parts, that the wheel of fortune turns faster than a mill-wheel,and that those who were up yesterday are down to-day. I am sorry for mywife and children, for when they might fairly and reasonably expect tosee their father return to them a governor or viceroy of some island orkingdom, they will see him come back a horse-boy. I have said all this,senor curate, only to urge your paternity to lay to your conscience yourill-treatment of my master; and have a care that God does not call you toaccount in another life for making a prisoner of him in this way, andcharge against you all the succours and good deeds that my lord DonQuixote leaves undone while he is shut up."Trim those lamps there!" exclaimed the barber at this; "so you are ofthe same fraternity as your master, too, Sancho? By God, I begin to seethat you will have to keep him company in the cage, and be enchanted likehim for having caught some of his humour and chivalry. It was an evilhour when you let yourself be got with child by his promises, and thatisland you long so much for found its way into your head.""I am not with child by anyone," returned Sancho, "nor am I a man to letmyself be got with child, if it was by the King himself. Though I am poorI am an old Christian, and I owe nothing to nobody, and if I long for anisland, other people long for worse. Each of us is the son of his ownworks; and being a man I may come to be pope, not to say governor of anisland, especially as my master may win so many that he will not knowwhom to give them to. Mind how you talk, master barber; for shaving isnot everything, and there is some difference between Peter and Peter. Isay this because we all know one another, and it will not do to throwfalse dice with me; and as to the enchantment of my master, God knows thetruth; leave it as it is; it only makes it worse to stir it."The barber did not care to answer Sancho lest by his plain speaking heshould disclose what the curate and he himself were trying so hard toconceal; and under the same apprehension the curate had asked the canonto ride on a little in advance, so that he might tell him the mystery ofthis man in the cage, and other things that would amuse him. The canonagreed, and going on ahead with his servants, listened with attention tothe account of the character, life, madness, and ways of Don Quixote,given him by the curate, who described to him briefly the beginning andorigin of his craze, and told him the whole story of his adventures up tohis being confined in the cage, together with the plan they had of takinghim home to try if by any means they could discover a cure for hismadness. The canon and his servants were surprised anew when they heardDon Quixote's strange story, and when it was finished he said, "To tellthe truth, senor curate, I for my part consider what they call books ofchivalry to be mischievous to the State; and though, led by idle andfalse taste, I have read the beginnings of almost all that have beenprinted, I never could manage to read any one of them from beginning toend; for it seems to me they are all more or less the same thing; and onehas nothing more in it than another; this no more than that. And in myopinion this sort of writing and composition is of the same species asthe fables they call the Milesian, nonsensical tales that aim solely atgiving amusement and not instruction, exactly the opposite of theapologue fables which amuse and instruct at the same time. And though itmay be the chief object of such books to amuse, I do not know how theycan succeed, when they are so full of such monstrous nonsense. For theenjoyment the mind feels must come from the beauty and harmony which itperceives or contemplates in the things that the eye or the imaginationbrings before it; and nothing that has any ugliness or disproportionabout it can give any pleasure. What beauty, then, or what proportion ofthe parts to the whole, or of the whole to the parts, can there be in abook or fable where a lad of sixteen cuts down a giant as tall as a towerand makes two halves of him as if he was an almond cake? And when theywant to give us a picture of a battle, after having told us that thereare a million of combatants on the side of the enemy, let the hero of thebook be opposed to them, and we have perforce to believe, whether we likeit or not, that the said knight wins the victory by the single might ofhis strong arm. And then, what shall we say of the facility with which aborn queen or empress will give herself over into the arms of someunknown wandering knight? What mind, that is not wholly barbarous anduncultured, can find pleasure in reading of how a great tower full ofknights sails away across the sea like a ship with a fair wind, and willbe to-night in Lombardy and to-morrow morning in the land of Prester Johnof the Indies, or some other that Ptolemy never described nor Marco Polosaw? And if, in answer to this, I am told that the authors of books ofthe kind write them as fiction, and therefore are not bound to regardniceties of truth, I would reply that fiction is all the better the moreit looks like truth, and gives the more pleasure the more probability andpossibility there is about it. Plots in fiction should be wedded to theunderstanding of the reader, and be constructed in such a way that,reconciling impossibilities, smoothing over difficulties, keeping themind on the alert, they may surprise, interest, divert, and entertain, sothat wonder and delight joined may keep pace one with the other; allwhich he will fail to effect who shuns verisimilitude and truth tonature, wherein lies the perfection of writing. I have never yet seen anybook of chivalry that puts together a connected plot complete in all itsnumbers, so that the middle agrees with the beginning, and the end withthe beginning and middle; on the contrary, they construct them with sucha multitude of members that it seems as though they meant to produce achimera or monster rather than a well-proportioned figure. And besidesall this they are harsh in their style, incredible in their achievements,licentious in their amours, uncouth in their courtly speeches, prolix intheir battles, silly in their arguments, absurd in their travels, and, inshort, wanting in everything like intelligent art; for which reason theydeserve to be banished from the Christian commonwealth as a worthlessbreed."The curate listened to him attentively and felt that he was a man ofsound understanding, and that there was good reason in what he said; sohe told him that, being of the same opinion himself, and bearing a grudgeto books of chivalry, he had burned all Don Quixote's, which were many;and gave him an account of the scrutiny he had made of them, and of thosehe had condemned to the flames and those he had spared, with which thecanon was not a little amused, adding that though he had said so much incondemnation of these books, still he found one good thing in them, andthat was the opportunity they afforded to a gifted intellect fordisplaying itself; for they presented a wide and spacious field overwhich the pen might range freely, describing shipwrecks, tempests,combats, battles, portraying a valiant captain with all thequalifications requisite to make one, showing him sagacious in foreseeingthe wiles of the enemy, eloquent in speech to encourage or restrain hissoldiers, ripe in counsel, rapid in resolve, as bold in biding his timeas in pressing the attack; now picturing some sad tragic incident, nowsome joyful and unexpected event; here a beauteous lady, virtuous, wise,and modest; there a Christian knight, brave and gentle; here a lawless,barbarous braggart; there a courteous prince, gallant and gracious;setting forth the devotion and loyalty of vassals, the greatness andgenerosity of nobles. "Or again," said he, "the author may show himselfto be an astronomer, or a skilled cosmographer, or musician, or oneversed in affairs of state, and sometimes he will have a chance of comingforward as a magician if he likes. He can set forth the craftiness ofUlysses, the piety of AEneas, the valour of Achilles, the misfortunes ofHector, the treachery of Sinon, the friendship of Euryalus, thegenerosity of Alexander, the boldness of Caesar, the clemency and truthof Trajan, the fidelity of Zopyrus, the wisdom of Cato, and in short allthe faculties that serve to make an illustrious man perfect, now unitingthem in one individual, again distributing them among many; and if thisbe done with charm of style and ingenious invention, aiming at the truthas much as possible, he will assuredly weave a web of bright and variedthreads that, when finished, will display such perfection and beauty thatit will attain the worthiest object any writing can seek, which, as Isaid before, is to give instruction and pleasure combined; for theunrestricted range of these books enables the author to show his powers,epic, lyric, tragic, or comic, and all the moods the sweet and winningarts of poesy and oratory are capable of; for the epic may be written inprose just as well as in verse."