Don Quixote

by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

them bearable or the remedy that would end them. “What you say is true,” responded Anselmo, “and with that confidence I will tell you, friend Lotario, that the desire that plagues me is my wondering if Camila, my wife, is as good and perfect as I think she is, and I cannot learn the truth except by testing her so that the test reveals the worth of her virtue, as fire shows the worth of gold. Because it seems to me, dear friend, that a woman is not virtuous if she is not solicited, and that she alone is strong who does not bend to promises, gifts, tears, and the constant importunities of lovers who woo her. Why be grateful when a woman is good,” he said, “if no one urges her to be bad? Why is it of consequence that she is shy and reserved if she does not have the occasion to lose her restraint and knows she has a husband who, at her first rash act, would take her life? In short, I do not hold the woman who is virtuous because of fear or lack of opportunity in the same esteem as the one who is courted and pursued and emerges wearing the victor’s crown. For these reasons, and many others I could mention that support and strengthen this opinion, my desire is for Camila, my wife, to pass through these difficulties, and be refined and prove her value in the fire of being wooed and courted by one worthy of desiring her; and if she emerges, as I believe she will, triumphant from this battle, I shall deem my good fortune unparalleled;

If a pagan felt this about friendship, how much more important is it for a Christian to feel the same, for he knows that divine friendship must not be lost for the sake of human friendship. When a friend goes so far as to set aside the demands of heaven in order to respond to those of his friend, it should not be for vain, trivial things but for those on which the honor and life of his friend depend.

For there is no jewel in the world as valuable as a chaste and honorable woman, and women’s honor consists entirely of the good opinion others have of them;

One must treat the virtuous woman as one treats relics: adore them but not touch them.

For this reason people commonly say that the husband of an adulterous woman, even though he has no knowledge of wife’s adultery and has given her no reason to be what she should not be, and it was not in his power to prevent his misfortune for he was neither negligent nor careless, yet despite all this he is called and characterized by base names that revile him, and in a certain sense those who know of his wife’s wickedness look at him with scornful rather than compassionate eyes, even though responsibility for his difficulties lies not with him but with the desires of his unvirtuous wife.

Remember that if a man seeks the impossible, the possible may justly be denied him;

for hope is always born at the same time as love;

A clear example demonstrating that the only way to defeat the amorous passion is to flee it, that no one should attempt to struggle against so powerful an enemy because divine forces are needed to vanquish its human ones.

for the immorality of the immoral woman brings with it this effect: she loses her good name and honor with the very man to whose entreaties and enticements she succumbed; he believes she surrenders more easily to other men and takes as absolute truth any suspicion of the kind that may occur to him.

Camila was horrified to hear what Lotario was saying, and with a good deal of anger and many well-chosen words, she reproached him, denouncing his wicked thoughts and the simpleminded and wrong-headed decision he had made; but since a woman naturally has a quicker wit for both good and evil than a man, though it tends to fail her when she embarks on any kind of deliberate reasoning,

it was the duty of a good wife not to give her husband reasons for disputes but to save him from as many as possible.

for when the powerful laws of desire hold sway, as long as no sin intervenes, the man who follows them cannot be faulted.

I cannot begin to describe for you the great beauty and grace, or the elegance of the rich attire, revealed to me by my beloved Zoraida. I will say only that more pearls hung from her lovely neck, ears, and tresses than she had hairs on her head. Around her ankles, which were bare, in accordance with Moorish custom, she wore two carcajes (the Moorish name for bracelets and bangles for the feet) of purest gold, studded with so many diamonds that, as she told me later, her father had valued them at ten thousand doblas,2 and the ones on her wrists were worth the same amount. She wore a large quantity of very fine pearls, because the greatest pride and joy of Moorish women is to adorn themselves with rich pearls, both large and small, and so the Moors have more pearls than any other nation;

Sancho Panza bowed to him with deep respect and kissed both his hands because he could not kiss only one, since they were tied together.

Your grace should be careful what you say, Señor Barber, because there’s more to life than trimming beards,

‘If all, or almost all, the plays that are popular now, imaginative works as well as historical ones, are known to be nonsense and without rhyme or reason, and despite this the mob hears them with pleasure and thinks of them and approves of them as good, when they are very far from being so, and the authors who compose them and the actors who perform them say they must be like this because that is just how the mob wants them, and no other way; the plays that have a design and follow the story as art demands appeal to a handful of discerning persons who understand them, while everyone else is incapable of comprehending their artistry; and since, as far as the authors and actors are concerned, it is better to earn a living with the crowd than a reputation with the elite, this is what would happen to my book after I had singed my eyebrows trying to keep the precepts I have mentioned and had become the tailor who wasn’t paid.’

And if mimesis is the principal quality a play should have, how can it possibly satisfy anyone of even average intelligence if the action is supposed to occur in the days of King Pepin and Charlemagne, but the central character is the Emperor Heraclius, who entered Jerusalem bearing the cross, and conquered the Holy Sepulchre, like Godfrey of Bouillon, when there is an infinite number of years between one and the other; if the play is based on fictions, historical truths are introduced and parts of others are combined, though they occurred to different people and at different times, and this is done not with any effort at verisimilitude, but with glaring errors that are completely unforgiveable. The worst thing is the ignorant folk who say that this is perfect, and that wanting anything else is pretentious and whimsical. Well then, what shall we say about sacred plays? What a number of false miracles and apocryphal, poorly understood stories they invent, attributing the miracles of one saint to another! And even in their secular plays they dare perform miracles, with no other concern or consideration than thinking that some miracle or stage effect, as they call it, would be a good idea at that point so the ignorant will marvel and come to the theater; all of this is prejudicial to the truth, and damaging to history, and even a discredit to the intelligence of Spaniards, because foreigners, who are punctilious in obeying the rules of drama, think of us as ignorant barbarian...

A poor man may have honor, but not a villain; need may cloud nobility, but not hide it completely; if virtue sheds her light, even along the crags and cracks of poverty, it will be esteemed by high, noble spirits, and so be favored.

“In that regard,” responded the bachelor, “there are different opinions, just as there are different tastes: some prefer the adventure of the windmills, which your grace thought were Briareuses and giants; others, that of the waterwheel; one man favors the description of the two armies that turned out to be two flocks of sheeps; the other praises the adventure of the body that was being carried to Segovia for burial; one says that the adventure of the galley slaves is superior to all the rest; another, that none equals that of the two gigantic Benedictines and the dispute with the valiant Basque.”

I do not know what moved the author to resort to other people’s novels and stories when there was so much to write about mine: no doubt he must have been guided by the proverb that says: ‘Straw or hay, it’s the same either way.’

In fact, as far as I can tell, Señor Bachelor, in order to write histories and books of any kind, one must have great judgment and mature understanding. To say witty things and to write cleverly requires great intelligence: the most perceptive character in a play is the fool, because the man who wishes to seem simple cannot possibly be a simpleton. History is like a sacred thing; it must be truthful, and wherever truth is, there God is; but despite this, there are some who write and toss off books as if they were fritters.”

I remember correctly, that between the extremes of cowardice and recklessness lies the middle way of valor, and if this is true, I don’t want him to run for no reason or attack when the numbers demand something else.

and if my master, Don Quixote, as a reward for my many good services, wants to give me one of the many ínsulas that his grace says are to be found out there, I’ll be very happy to accept it; and if he doesn’t give it to me, I’m a human being, and a man shouldn’t live depending on anybody but God; besides, bread will taste as good, and maybe even better, whether I’m a governor or not; for all I know, in those governorships the devil could have set a snare for me that will make me stumble and fall and knock out all my teeth. Sancho I was born, and Sancho I plan to die; but even so, if heaven should be so kind as to offer me, without too much trouble or risk, an ínsula or something else like that, I’m not such a fool that I’d turn it down, because, as they say: ‘When they give you a heifer, don’t forget to bring a rope,’ and ‘When good comes along, lock it in your house.’”

“Not that, my husband,” said Teresa, “let the chicken live even if she has the pip; may you live, and let the devil take all the governorships there are in the world; you came out of your mother’s womb without a governorship, and you’ve lived until now without a governorship, and when it pleases God you’ll go, or they’ll carry you, to the grave without a governorship.

“Do you know why, Sancho?” responded Teresa. “Because of the proverb that says: ‘Whoever tries to conceal you, reveals you!’ Nobody does more than glance at the poor, but they look closely at the rich; if a rich man was once poor, that’s where the whispers and rumors begin, and the wicked murmurs of gossips who crowd the streets like swarms of bees.”

“As soon as I have the governorship,” said Sancho, “I’ll send for him posthaste, and I’ll send you some money; I’ll have plenty, because there are always plenty of people who lend money to governors when they don’t have any;

I say that you should do whatever you want; women are born with the obligation to obey their husbands even if they’re fools.”

Look, my friends, there are four kinds of lineage and, listen carefully, all the lineages in the world can be reduced to these: some had humble beginnings, and extended and expanded until they reached the heights of greatness; others had noble beginnings, and preserved them, and still preserve and maintain them just as they were; still others may have had noble beginnings but, like pyramids, they tapered to a point, having diminished and annihilated their origins until they ended in nothingness, as the tip of the pyramid is nothing compared to its base or bottom; finally, there are others, and these are the majority, that did not have a good beginning or a reasonable middle, and therefore in the end they have no name, like the lineages of ordinary plebeians.

From all that I have said I want you to infer, you foolish women, that the confusion surrounding lineages is great, and the only ones that appear distinguished and illustrious are those that display those qualities in their virtue, and in the wealth and generosity of their nobles. I said virtue, wealth, and generosity, because the great man who is vicious will be extremely vicious, and the closefisted rich man will be a miserly beggar, for the person who possesses wealth is not made happy by having it but by spending it, and not spending it haphazardly but in knowing how to spend it well. An impoverished knight has no way to show he is a knight except through his virtue, by being affable, well-mannered, courteous, civil, and diligent, not proud, arrogant, or prone to gossip, and above all, by being charitable, for with two maravedís given joyfully to a poor man, he will show that he is as generous as the man who gives alms to the loud ringing of bells; no one who sees a knight adorned with these virtues can fail to judge and consider him to be of good breeding, even if he does not know him, and his not being so would be remarkable; praise was always the reward of virtue, and virtuous men cannot avoid being praised.

I do not recall reading that any knight errant ever specified a fixed salary for his squire. I know only that all of them served without pay, and when they least expected it, if things had gone well for their masters, they found themselves rewarded with an ínsula or something comparable; at the very least, they received a title and nobility. If, with these expectations and addenda, you, Sancho, would like to serve me again, then welcome,4 but if you think I am going to force the ancient usage of knight errantry beyond its limits and boundaries, then you are sadly mistaken. Therefore, my dear Sancho, return to your house and tell your Teresa my intention, and if it pleases her and you to serve me without wages, bene quidem,5 and if not, we shall still be friends, for if the pigeon coop has plenty of feed, it will have plenty of pigeons. And remember, Sancho, that fine hopes are better than miserable possessions, and a good lawsuit better than a bad payment.

“Now, tell me which is the greater deed, raising a dead man or killing a giant?” “The answer is self-evident,” responded Don Quixote. “It is greater to raise a dead man.” “Then I’ve got you,” said Sancho. “The fame of those who raise the dead, give sight to the blind, heal the lame, and cure the sick, and whose tombs have lamps burning in front of them, and whose chapels are filled with devout people who adore the relics on their knees, that would be a better fame, in this world and the next, than the fame left behind by all the gentile emperors and knights errant who ever lived.”

When the author of this great history came to recount what is recounted in this chapter, he says he would have preferred to pass over it in silence, fearful it would not be given credence, for the madness of Don Quixote here reached the limits and boundaries of the greatest madnesses that can be imagined, and even passed two crossbow shots beyond them. But finally, despite this fear and trepidation, he wrote down the mad acts just as Don Quixote performed them, not adding or subtracting an atom of truth from the history and not concerning himself about the accusations that he was a liar, which might be made against him; and he was right, because truth may be stretched thin and not break, and it always floats on the surface of the lie, like oil on water.

“Well, the same thing happens in the drama and business of this world, where some play emperors, others pontiffs, in short, all the figures that can be presented in a play, but at the end, which is when life is over, death removes all the clothing that differentiated them, and all are equal in the grave.” “That’s a fine comparison,” said Sancho, “though not so new that I haven’t heard it many times before, like the one about chess: as long as the game lasts, each piece has its particular rank and position, but when the game’s over they’re mixed and jumbled and thrown together in a bag, just the way life is tossed into the grave.”1 “Every day, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “you are becoming less simple and more intelligent.”

Don Quixote laughed at Sancho’s pretentious words but thought that what he said about the change in him was true, because from time to time he spoke in a manner that amazed Don Quixote, although almost always, when Sancho wanted to speak in an erudite and courtly way, his words would plummet from the peaks of his simplicity into the depths of his ignorance; the area in which he displayed the most elegance and the best memory was in his use of proverbs, regardless of whether or not they had anything to do with the subject, as has been seen and noted in the course of this history.

“Oh, Señor Squire, how little your grace understands,” replied the Squire of the Wood, “about paying a compliment! Can it be that you don’t know that when a knight gives the bull in the square a good thrust with the lance, or when anybody does anything well, commoners always say: ‘Oh whoreson, but that damned little whoreson did that well!’? And in that phrase, what seems to be an insult is a wonderful compliment, and you should disavow, Señor, any sons or daughters who do not perform deeds that bring their parents that kind of praise.”

In short, most recently she has ordered me to travel through all the provinces of Spain and have all the knights errant wandering there confess that she alone is the greatest beauty of all the ladies in the world today, and that I am the most valiant and most perfectly enamored knight on earth; to satisfy this request I have already traveled most of Spain and conquered many knights who dared contradict me. But what gratifies me the most and makes me proudest is having conquered in single combat that most famous knight, Don Quixote of La Mancha, and forced him to confess that my Casildea is more beautiful than his Dulcinea; with this one conquest I consider that I have conquered all the knights in the world, because Don Quixote has conquered them all, and since I conquered him, his glory, fame, and honor have passed and been transferred to my person.

Briefly then, to summarize everything in a few words, or in only one, I say that I am Don Quixote of La Mancha, also known as the Knight of the Sorrowful Face, and although praising oneself is vile, I am obliged perhaps to sing my own praises, which is understandable since there is no one present to do it for me;

Poetry, Señor, in my opinion, is like an innocent young maiden who is extremely beautiful, and whom many other maidens, who are the other fields of knowledge, are careful to enrich, polish, and adorn,

“If, by chance, His Majesty asks who performed the deed, tell him it was The Knight of the Lions; from this day forth, I want the name I have had until now, The Knight of the Sorrowful Face, to be changed, altered, turned, and transformed into this, and in doing so, I follow the ancient usage of knights errant, who changed their names whenever they wished, or whenever it seemed appropriate.”

I, then, since it is my fortune to be counted in the number of knights errant, cannot help but attack all things that seem to me to fall within the jurisdiction of my endeavors; and so, it was my rightful place to attack the lions which I now attacked, although I knew it was exceedingly reckless, because I know very well what valor means; it is a virtue that occupies a place between two wicked extremes, which are cowardice and temerity, but it is better for the valiant man to touch on and climb to the heights of temerity than to touch on and fall to the depths of cowardice; and just as it is easier for the prodigal to be generous than the miser, it is easier for the reckless man to become truly brave than for the coward; and in the matter of undertaking adventures, your grace may believe me, Señor Don Diego, it is better to lose with too many cards than too few, because ‘This knight is reckless and daring’ sounds better to the ear of those who hear it than ‘This knight is timid and cowardly.’”

The companionship of one’s own wife is not merchandise that, once purchased, can be returned, or exchanged, or altered; it is an irrevocable circumstance that lasts as long as one lives: it is a rope that, if put around one’s neck, turns into the Gordian knot, and if the scythe of Death does not cut it, there is no way to untie it.

Señor, I think a poor man should be content with whatever he finds and not go asking for the moon.

“To hell with Basilio’s talents! You’re worth what you have, and what you have is what you’re worth. There are only two lineages in the world, as my grandmother used to say, and that’s the haves and the have-nots, though she was on the side of having; nowadays, Señor Don Quixote, wealth is better than wisdom: an ass covered in gold seems better than a saddled horse. And so I say again that I’m on the side of Camacho, whose pots are overflowing with geese and chickens, hares and rabbits, while Basilio’s, if they ever show up, and even if they don’t, won’t hold anything but watered wine.”

What astonishes me is that I know, as well as I know that it is day, that Durandarte ended the days of his life in my arms, and that when he was dead I removed his heart with my own hands; and the truth is that it must have weighed two pounds, because according to naturalists, the man who has a larger heart has greater courage than the man whose heart is small.

And you should not think that because I speak well of earlier hermits, I speak ill of modern ones; I mean to say only that the penances of modern hermits are not as harsh and rigorous as the older ones, but all of them are still good; at least, I judge them to be good; in the worst of circumstances, the hypocrite who pretends to be good does less harm than the public sinner.”

Don Quixote turned to the duchess and said: “Your highness can imagine that no knight errant in the world ever had a squire more talkative or comical than the one I have, and he will prove me truthful if your magnificence should wish to have me serve you for a few days.” To which the duchess responded: “That our good Sancho is comical is something I esteem greatly, because it is a sign of his cleverness; for wit and humor, Señor Don Quixote, as your grace well knows, do not reside in slow minds, and since our good Sancho is comical and witty, from this moment on I declare him a clever man.” “And a talkative one,” added Don Quixote.

The place where I am now, and the presence in which I find myself, and the respect I always have had, and have now, for the vocation your grace professes, bind and restrain the censure of my righteous anger; and for the reasons I have said, and because I know that everyone knows that the weapons of men in cassocks are the same as those of women, which is to say, their tongues, I shall with mine enter into equal combat with your grace, from whom one ought to have expected good counsel rather than base vituperation. Holy and well-intentioned rebukes require different circumstances and demand different occasions: at least, your having rebuked me in public, and so harshly, has gone beyond all the bounds of legitimate reproof, which is based more on gentleness than on asperity, nor is it just, having no knowledge of the sin that is being rebuked, so thoughtlessly to call the sinner a simpleton and a fool. Otherwise tell me, your grace: for which of the inanities that you have seen in me do you condemn and revile me, and order me to return to my house and tend to it and my wife and my children, not knowing if I have one or the other? Or is it enough for clerics simply to enter other people’s houses willy-nilly to guide the owners, even though some have been brought up in the narrow confines of a boarding school and never have seen more of the world than the twenty or thirty leagues of their district, and then suddenly decide to dictate laws to chivalry and make judgments concern...

“I’m saying, Señora,” he responded, “that in the courts of other princes I’ve always heard that when the tables are cleared they pour water over your hands, but not lather on your beard; and that’s why it’s good to live a long time, because then you see a lot; though they also say that if you have a long life, you go through a lot of bad times, though going through one of these washings is more pleasure than trouble.”

“That may be so,” replied Sancho, “but if you pay your debts, you don’t worry about guaranties, and it’s better to have God’s help than to get up early, and your belly leads your feet, not the other way around; I mean, if God helps me, and I do what I ought to with good intentions, I’ll be sure to govern in grand style. Just put a finger in my mouth and see if I bite or not!”

“Señora, where there is music, there can be nothing bad.”