PART II - CHAPTER VIII.

by Miguel de Cervantes

　　WHEREIN IS RELATED WHAT BEFELL DON QUIXOTE ON HIS WAY TO SEE HIS LADYDULCINEA DEL TOBOSO"Blessed be Allah the all-powerful!" says Hamete Benengeli on beginningthis eighth chapter; "blessed be Allah!" he repeats three times; and hesays he utters these thanksgivings at seeing that he has now got DonQuixote and Sancho fairly afield, and that the readers of his delightfulhistory may reckon that the achievements and humours of Don Quixote andhis squire are now about to begin; and he urges them to forget the formerchivalries of the ingenious gentleman and to fix their eyes on those thatare to come, which now begin on the road to El Toboso, as the othersbegan on the plains of Montiel; nor is it much that he asks inconsideration of all he promises, and so he goes on to say:Don Quixote and Sancho were left alone, and the moment Samson took hisdeparture, Rocinante began to neigh, and Dapple to sigh, which, by bothknight and squire, was accepted as a good sign and a very happy omen;though, if the truth is to be told, the sighs and brays of Dapple werelouder than the neighings of the hack, from which Sancho inferred thathis good fortune was to exceed and overtop that of his master, building,perhaps, upon some judicial astrology that he may have known, though thehistory says nothing about it; all that can be said is, that when hestumbled or fell, he was heard to say he wished he had not come out, forby stumbling or falling there was nothing to be got but a damaged shoe ora broken rib; and, fool as he was, he was not much astray in this.Said Don Quixote, "Sancho, my friend, night is drawing on upon us as wego, and more darkly than will allow us to reach El Toboso by daylight;for there I am resolved to go before I engage in another adventure, andthere I shall obtain the blessing and generous permission of the peerlessDulcinea, with which permission I expect and feel assured that I shallconclude and bring to a happy termination every perilous adventure; fornothing in life makes knights-errant more valorous than findingthemselves favoured by their ladies.""So I believe," replied Sancho; "but I think it will be difficult foryour worship to speak with her or see her, at any rate where you will beable to receive her blessing; unless, indeed, she throws it over the wallof the yard where I saw her the time before, when I took her the letterthat told of the follies and mad things your worship was doing in theheart of Sierra Morena.""Didst thou take that for a yard wall, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "whereor at which thou sawest that never sufficiently extolled grace andbeauty? It must have been the gallery, corridor, or portico of some richand royal palace.""It might have been all that," returned Sancho, "but to me it looked likea wall, unless I am short of memory.""At all events, let us go there, Sancho," said Don Quixote; "for, so thatI see her, it is the same to me whether it be over a wall, or at awindow, or through the chink of a door, or the grate of a garden; for anybeam of the sun of her beauty that reaches my eyes will give light to myreason and strength to my heart, so that I shall be unmatched andunequalled in wisdom and valour.""Well, to tell the truth, senor," said Sancho, "when I saw that sun ofthe lady Dulcinea del Toboso, it was not bright enough to throw out beamsat all; it must have been, that as her grace was sifting that wheat Itold you of, the thick dust she raised came before her face like a cloudand dimmed it.""What! dost thou still persist, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "in saying,thinking, believing, and maintaining that my lady Dulcinea was siftingwheat, that being an occupation and task entirely at variance with whatis and should be the employment of persons of distinction, who areconstituted and reserved for other avocations and pursuits that showtheir rank a bowshot off? Thou hast forgotten, O Sancho, those lines ofour poet wherein he paints for us how, in their crystal abodes, thosefour nymphs employed themselves who rose from their loved Tagus andseated themselves in a verdant meadow to embroider those tissues whichthe ingenious poet there describes to us, how they were worked and wovenwith gold and silk and pearls; and something of this sort must have beenthe employment of my lady when thou sawest her, only that the spite whichsome wicked enchanter seems to have against everything of mine changesall those things that give me pleasure, and turns them into shapes unliketheir own; and so I fear that in that history of my achievements whichthey say is now in print, if haply its author was some sage who is anenemy of mine, he will have put one thing for another, mingling athousand lies with one truth, and amusing himself by relatingtransactions which have nothing to do with the sequence of a truehistory. O envy, root of all countless evils, and cankerworm of thevirtues! All the vices, Sancho, bring some kind of pleasure with them;but envy brings nothing but irritation, bitterness, and rage.""So I say too," replied Sancho; "and I suspect in that legend or historyof us that the bachelor Samson Carrasco told us he saw, my honour goesdragged in the dirt, knocked about, up and down, sweeping the streets, asthey say. And yet, on the faith of an honest man, I never spoke ill ofany enchanter, and I am not so well off that I am to be envied; to besure, I am rather sly, and I have a certain spice of the rogue in me; butall is covered by the great cloak of my simplicity, always natural andnever acted; and if I had no other merit save that I believe, as I alwaysdo, firmly and truly in God, and all the holy Roman Catholic Church holdsand believes, and that I am a mortal enemy of the Jews, the historiansought to have mercy on me and treat me well in their writings. But letthem say what they like; naked was I born, naked I find myself, I neitherlose nor gain; nay, while I see myself put into a book and passed on fromhand to hand over the world, I don't care a fig, let them say what theylike of me.""That, Sancho," returned Don Quixote, "reminds me of what happened to afamous poet of our own day, who, having written a bitter satire againstall the courtesan ladies, did not insert or name in it a certain lady ofwhom it was questionable whether she was one or not. She, seeing she wasnot in the list of the poet, asked him what he had seen in her that hedid not include her in the number of the others, telling him he must addto his satire and put her in the new part, or else look out for theconsequences. The poet did as she bade him, and left her without a shredof reputation, and she was satisfied by getting fame though it wasinfamy. In keeping with this is what they relate of that shepherd who setfire to the famous temple of Diana, by repute one of the seven wonders ofthe world, and burned it with the sole object of making his name live inafter ages; and, though it was forbidden to name him, or mention his nameby word of mouth or in writing, lest the object of his ambition should beattained, nevertheless it became known that he was called Erostratus. Andsomething of the same sort is what happened in the case of the greatemperor Charles V and a gentleman in Rome. The emperor was anxious to seethat famous temple of the Rotunda, called in ancient times the temple 'ofall the gods,' but now-a-days, by a better nomenclature, 'of all thesaints,' which is the best preserved building of all those of paganconstruction in Rome, and the one which best sustains the reputation ofmighty works and magnificence of its founders. It is in the form of ahalf orange, of enormous dimensions, and well lighted, though no lightpenetrates it save that which is admitted by a window, or rather roundskylight, at the top; and it was from this that the emperor examined thebuilding. A Roman gentleman stood by his side and explained to him theskilful construction and ingenuity of the vast fabric and its wonderfularchitecture, and when they had left the skylight he said to the emperor,'A thousand times, your Sacred Majesty, the impulse came upon me to seizeyour Majesty in my arms and fling myself down from yonder skylight, so asto leave behind me in the world a name that would last for ever.' 'I amthankful to you for not carrying such an evil thought into effect,' saidthe emperor, 'and I shall give you no opportunity in future of againputting your loyalty to the test; and I therefore forbid you ever tospeak to me or to be where I am; and he followed up these words bybestowing a liberal bounty upon him. My meaning is, Sancho, that thedesire of acquiring fame is a very powerful motive. What, thinkest thou,was it that flung Horatius in full armour down from the bridge into thedepths of the Tiber? What burned the hand and arm of Mutius? Whatimpelled Curtius to plunge into the deep burning gulf that opened in themidst of Rome? What, in opposition to all the omens that declared againsthim, made Julius Caesar cross the Rubicon? And to come to more modernexamples, what scuttled the ships, and left stranded and cut off thegallant Spaniards under the command of the most courteous Cortes in theNew World? All these and a variety of other great exploits are, were andwill be, the work of fame that mortals desire as a reward and a portionof the immortality their famous deeds deserve; though we CatholicChristians and knights-errant look more to that future glory that iseverlasting in the ethereal regions of heaven than to the vanity of thefame that is to be acquired in this present transitory life; a fame that,however long it may last, must after all end with the world itself, whichhas its own appointed end. So that, O Sancho, in what we do we must notoverpass the bounds which the Christian religion we profess has assignedto us. We have to slay pride in giants, envy by generosity and noblenessof heart, anger by calmness of demeanour and equanimity, gluttony andsloth by the spareness of our diet and the length of our vigils, lust andlewdness by the loyalty we preserve to those whom we have made themistresses of our thoughts, indolence by traversing the world in alldirections seeking opportunities of making ourselves, besides Christians,famous knights. Such, Sancho, are the means by which we reach thoseextremes of praise that fair fame carries with it.""All that your worship has said so far," said Sancho, "I have understoodquite well; but still I would be glad if your worship would dissolve adoubt for me, which has just this minute come into my mind.""Solve, thou meanest, Sancho," said Don Quixote; "say on, in God's name,and I will answer as well as I can.""Tell me, senor," Sancho went on to say, "those Julys or Augusts, and allthose venturous knights that you say are now dead--where are they now?""The heathens," replied Don Quixote, "are, no doubt, in hell; theChristians, if they were good Christians, are either in purgatory or inheaven.""Very good," said Sancho; "but now I want to know--the tombs where thebodies of those great lords are, have they silver lamps before them, orare the walls of their chapels ornamented with crutches, winding-sheets,tresses of hair, legs and eyes in wax? Or what are they ornamented with?"To which Don Quixote made answer: "The tombs of the heathens weregenerally sumptuous temples; the ashes of Julius Caesar's body wereplaced on the top of a stone pyramid of vast size, which they now call inRome Saint Peter's needle. The emperor Hadrian had for a tomb a castle aslarge as a good-sized village, which they called the Moles Adriani, andis now the castle of St. Angelo in Rome. The queen Artemisia buried herhusband Mausolus in a tomb which was reckoned one of the seven wonders ofthe world; but none of these tombs, or of the many others of theheathens, were ornamented with winding-sheets or any of those otherofferings and tokens that show that they who are buried there aresaints.""That's the point I'm coming to," said Sancho; "and now tell me, which isthe greater work, to bring a dead man to life or to kill a giant?""The answer is easy," replied Don Quixote; "it is a greater work to bringto life a dead man.""Now I have got you," said Sancho; "in that case the fame of them whobring the dead to life, who give sight to the blind, cure cripples,restore health to the sick, and before whose tombs there are lampsburning, and whose chapels are filled with devout folk on their kneesadoring their relics be a better fame in this life and in the other thanthat which all the heathen emperors and knights-errant that have everbeen in the world have left or may leave behind them?""That I grant, too," said Don Quixote."Then this fame, these favours, these privileges, or whatever you callit," said Sancho, "belong to the bodies and relics of the saints who,with the approbation and permission of our holy mother Church, havelamps, tapers, winding-sheets, crutches, pictures, eyes and legs, bymeans of which they increase devotion and add to their own Christianreputation. Kings carry the bodies or relics of saints on theirshoulders, and kiss bits of their bones, and enrich and adorn theiroratories and favourite altars with them.""What wouldst thou have me infer from all thou hast said, Sancho?" askedDon Quixote."My meaning is," said Sancho, "let us set about becoming saints, and weshall obtain more quickly the fair fame we are striving after; for youknow, senor, yesterday or the day before yesterday (for it is so latelyone may say so) they canonised and beatified two little barefoot friars,and it is now reckoned the greatest good luck to kiss or touch the ironchains with which they girt and tortured their bodies, and they are heldin greater veneration, so it is said, than the sword of Roland in thearmoury of our lord the King, whom God preserve. So that, senor, it isbetter to be an humble little friar of no matter what order, than avaliant knight-errant; with God a couple of dozen of penance lashings areof more avail than two thousand lance-thrusts, be they given to giants,or monsters, or dragons.""All that is true," returned Don Quixote, "but we cannot all be friars,and many are the ways by which God takes his own to heaven; chivalry is areligion, there are sainted knights in glory.""Yes," said Sancho, "but I have heard say that there are more friars inheaven than knights-errant.""That," said Don Quixote, "is because those in religious orders are morenumerous than knights.""The errants are many," said Sancho."Many," replied Don Quixote, "but few they who deserve the name ofknights."With these, and other discussions of the same sort, they passed thatnight and the following day, without anything worth mention happening tothem, whereat Don Quixote was not a little dejected; but at length thenext day, at daybreak, they descried the great city of El Toboso, at thesight of which Don Quixote's spirits rose and Sancho's fell, for he didnot know Dulcinea's house, nor in all his life had he ever seen her, anymore than his master; so that they were both uneasy, the one to see her,the other at not having seen her, and Sancho was at a loss to know whathe was to do when his master sent him to El Toboso. In the end, DonQuixote made up his mind to enter the city at nightfall, and they waiteduntil the time came among some oak trees that were near El Toboso; andwhen the moment they had agreed upon arrived, they made their entranceinto the city, where something happened them that may fairly be calledsomething.