Miguel Cervantes - The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, Complete

“If it goes by good name and fame,” said the bachelor, “your worship alone bears away the palm from all the knights-errant; for the Moor in his own language, and the Christian in his, have taken care to set before us your gallantry, your high courage in encountering dangers, your fortitude in adversity, your patience under misfortunes as well as wounds, the purity and continence of the platonic loves of your worship and my lady Dona Dulcinea del Toboso-”

“I never heard my lady Dulcinea called Dona,” observed Sancho here; “nothing more than the lady Dulcinea del Toboso; so here already the history is wrong.”

“That is not an objection of any importance,” replied Carrasco.

“Certainly not,” said Don Quixote; “but tell me, senor bachelor, what deeds of mine are they that are made most of in this history?”

“On that point,” replied the bachelor, “opinions differ, as tastes do; some swear by the adventure of the windmills that your worship took to be Briareuses and giants; others by that of the fulling mills; one cries up the description of the two armies that afterwards took the appearance of two droves of sheep; another that of the dead body on its way to be buried at Segovia; a third says the liberation of the galley slaves is the best of all, and a fourth that nothing comes up to the affair with the Benedictine giants, and the battle with the valiant Biscayan.”

“Tell me, senor bachelor,” said Sancho at this point, “does the adventure with the Yanguesans come in, when our good Rocinante went hankering after dainties?”

“The sage has left nothing in the ink-bottle,” replied Samson; “he tells all and sets down everything, even to the capers that worthy Sancho cut in the blanket.”

“I cut no capers in the blanket,” returned Sancho; “in the air I did, and more of them than I liked.”

“There is no human history in the world, I suppose,” said Don Quixote, “that has not its ups and downs, but more than others such as deal with chivalry, for they can never be entirely made up of prosperous adventures.”

“For all that,” replied the bachelor, “there are those who have read the history who say they would have been glad if the author had left out some of the countless cudgellings that were inflicted on Senor Don Quixote in various encounters.”

“That’s where the truth of the history comes in,” said Sancho.

“At the same time they might fairly have passed them over in silence,” observed Don Quixote; “for there is no need of recording events which do not change or affect the truth of a history, if they tend to bring the hero of it into contempt. AEneas was not in truth and earnest so pious as Virgil represents him, nor Ulysses so wise as Homer describes him.”

“That is true,” said Samson; “but it is one thing to write as a poet, another to write as a historian; the poet may describe or sing things, not as they were, but as they ought to have been; but the historian has to write them down, not as they ought to have been, but as they were, without adding anything to the truth or taking anything from it.”

“Well then,” said Sancho, “if this senor Moor goes in for telling the truth, no doubt among my master’s drubbings mine are to be found; for they never took the measure of his worship’s shoulders without doing the same for my whole body; but I have no right to wonder at that, for, as my master himself says, the members must share the pain of the head.”

“You are a sly dog, Sancho,” said Don Quixote; “i’ faith, you have no want of memory when you choose to remember.”

“If I were to try to forget the thwacks they gave me,” said Sancho, “my weals would not let me, for they are still fresh on my ribs.”

“Hush, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “and don’t interrupt the bachelor, whom I entreat to go on and tell all that is said about me in this history.”

“And about me,” said Sancho, “for they say, too, that I am one of the principal presonages in it.”

“Personages, not presonages, friend Sancho,” said Samson.

“What! Another word-catcher!” said Sancho; “if that’s to be the way we shall not make an end in a lifetime.”

“May God shorten mine, Sancho,” returned the bachelor, “if you are not the second person in the history, and there are even some who would rather hear you talk than the cleverest in the whole book; though there are some, too, who say you showed yourself over-credulous in believing there was any possibility in the government of that island offered you by Senor Don Quixote.”

“There is still sunshine on the wall,” said Don Quixote; “and when Sancho is somewhat more advanced in life, with the experience that years bring, he will be fitter and better qualified for being a governor than he is at present.”

“By God, master,” said Sancho, “the island that I cannot govern with the years I have, I’ll not be able to govern with the years of Methuselah; the difficulty is that the said island keeps its distance somewhere, I know not where; and not that there is any want of head in me to govern it.”

“Leave it to God, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “for all will be and perhaps better than you think; no leaf on the tree stirs but by God’s will.”

“That is true,” said Samson; “and if it be God’s will, there will not be any want of a thousand islands, much less one, for Sancho to govern.”

“I have seen governors in these parts,” said Sancho, “that are not to be compared to my shoe-sole; and for all that they are called ‘your lordship’ and served on silver.”

“Those are not governors of islands,” observed Samson, “but of other governments of an easier kind: those that govern islands must at least know grammar.”

“I could manage the gram well enough,” said Sancho; “but for the mar I have neither leaning nor liking, for I don’t know what it is; but leaving this matter of the government in God’s hands, to send me wherever it may be most to his service, I may tell you, senor bachelor Samson Carrasco, it has pleased me beyond measure that the author of this history should have spoken of me in such a way that what is said of me gives no offence; for, on the faith of a true squire, if he had said anything about me that was at all unbecoming an old Christian, such as I am, the deaf would have heard of it.”

“That would be working miracles,” said Samson.

“Miracles or no miracles,” said Sancho, “let everyone mind how he speaks or writes about people, and not set down at random the first thing that comes into his head.”

“One of the faults they find with this history,” said the bachelor, “is that its author inserted in it a novel called ‘The Ill-advised Curiosity;’ not that it is bad or ill-told, but that it is out of place and has nothing to do with the history of his worship Senor Don Quixote.”

“I will bet the son of a dog has mixed the cabbages and the baskets,” said Sancho.

“Then, I say,” said Don Quixote, “the author of my history was no sage, but some ignorant chatterer, who, in a haphazard and heedless way, set about writing it, let it turn out as it might, just as Orbaneja, the painter of Ubeda, used to do, who, when they asked him what he was painting, answered, ‘What it may turn out.’ Sometimes he would paint a cock in such a fashion, and so unlike, that he had to write alongside of it in Gothic letters, ‘This is a cock; and so it will be with my history, which will require a commentary to make it intelligible.”

“No fear of that,” returned Samson, “for it is so plain that there is nothing in it to puzzle over; the children turn its leaves, the young people read it, the grown men understand it, the old folk praise it; in a word, it is so thumbed, and read, and got by heart by people of all sorts, that the instant they see any lean hack, they say, ‘There goes Rocinante.’ And those that are most given to reading it are the pages, for there is not a lord’s ante-chamber where there is not a ‘Don Quixote’ to be found; one takes it up if another lays it down; this one pounces upon it, and that begs for it. In short, the said history is the most delightful and least injurious entertainment that has been hitherto seen, for there is not to be found in the whole of it even the semblance of an immodest word, or a thought that is other than Catholic.”