Don Quixote

by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

‘What I got out of governing,’ Sancho replied, ‘was finding out that I’m no good at governing anything except a herd of goats, and that any profit you get out of this governing business comes at the price of your rest and your sleep and even your food,

that I am your squire Sancho Panza and I’ve never died in all the days of my born life

I was born, Sancho, to live dying, and you were born to die eating,

now that he had Don Quixote in his house he started looking for ways in which, without doing him any harm, he could reveal his capers to the public, because a jest that hurts is no jest, and no sport is any sport at all if it damages others.

Don’t you see, sir, that the benefits of Don Quixote’s recovery can’t be compared with the pleasure that his antics provide?

the Count of Salazar,1 to whom His Majesty has entrusted our expulsion, won’t heed any appeals, or promises, or gifts, or lamentations: although it is true that he tempers justice with mercy, he can see that the whole body of our race is tainted and rotten, and so he applies to it the cautery that burns rather than the ointment that soothes;

So to my mind the fat challenger should prune, trim, lop, polish and smooth eleven stone of his flesh away, from this part of his body and from that, just as he pleases, and then he’ll be left weighing nine stone, the same as his opponent, and they’ll be able to race on equal terms.’

‘He isn’t short of anything – he always pays on the dot, specially if the coinage is madness.

sleep, the cloak that covers all human thoughts, the food that takes away hunger, the water that chases away thirst, the fire that warms the cold, the cold that cools the heat and, in short, the universal coinage that can buy anything,

I’m the real Sancho Panza, and I’m so funny it’s as if fun had rained down on me from heaven, and if you don’t believe me just give me a try, and follow me around for a year or so,

Barcelona, the storehouse of courtesy, the refuge of strangers, the hospital of the poor, the homeland of the brave, the avenger of the affronted and the appreciative returner of firm friendship, unique in its setting and its beauty.

My mind has been restored to me, and it is now clear and free, without those gloomy shadows of ignorance cast over me by my wretched, obsessive reading of those detestable books of chivalry.

I am no longer Don Quixote de la Mancha but Alonso Quixano, for whom my way of life earned me the nickname of “the Good”.

while Don Quixote was plain Alonso Quixano the Good – and while he was Don Quixote, too – he was always of gentle disposition and affable behaviour, and well loved not only by his own household but by everybody who knew him.

For me alone was Don Quixote born, and I for him; it was for him to act, for me to write; we two are as one, in spite of that false writer from Tordesillas

my only desire has been to make men hate those false, absurd histories in books of chivalry,