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“Even so,” replied Don Quixote, “I should like to know the particular reason for each one’s misfortune.”

To these words he added others so civil and discreet to persuade them to tell him what he wished to hear that the other mounted guard said:

“Although we have the record and certificate of sentence of each of these wretched men, this is not the proper time to stop and take them out and read them; your grace may approach and question the prisoners, and they will tell you themselves if they wish to, and they will, because these are people who take pleasure in doing and saying false and wicked things.”

With this authorization, which Don Quixote would have taken even if it had not been granted to him, he approached the chain and asked the first man what sins he had committed to be taken away in so unpleasant a manner. He responded that it was on account of his being a lover.

“Is that all?” replied Don Quixote. “If they throw men in the galleys for being lovers, I should have been rowing in one long ago.”

“It isn’t the kind of love your grace is thinking about,” said the galley slave. “Mine was a great love for a laundry basket filled with linen, and I loved it so much and embraced it so tightly that if the law hadn’t taken it from me by force, to this day I wouldn’t have let go of it willingly. I was caught red-handed, there was no need for torture, the trial concluded, they kissed my back a hundred times, gave me three in the gurapas, and that was the end of that.”1

“What are gurapas?” asked Don Quixote.

“Gurapas are galleys,” responded the galley slave.

He was a young man, about twenty-four years old, who said he was a native of Piedrahíta. Don Quixote asked the same question of the sec-ond man, who was so downcast and melancholy he did not say a word, but the first prisoner responded for him and said:

“This man, Señor, is being taken away for being a canary, I mean a musician and singer.”

“What?” Don Quixote repeated. “Men also go to the galleys for being musicians and singers?”

“Yes, Señor,” responded the galley slave, “because there’s nothing worse than singing when you’re in difficulty.”

“But I have heard it said,” said Don Quixote, “that troubles take wing for the man who can sing.”

“Here just the opposite is true,” said the galley slave. “Warble once, and you weep the rest of your days.”

“I do not understand,” said Don Quixote.

But one of the guards told him:

“Señor, among these non sancta people, singing when you’re in difficulty means confessing under torture. They tortured this sinner and he confessed his crime, which was rustling, or stealing livestock, and because he confessed he was sentenced to six years in the galleys, plus two hundred lashes, which he already bears on his back; he’s always very downhearted and sad because the rest of the thieves, the ones he left behind and the ones who are traveling with him, abuse and humiliate and insult him, and think very little of him, because he confessed and didn’t have the courage to say his nos. Because they say no has even fewer letters than yes, and a criminal is very lucky when his life or death depends on his own words and not on those of witnesses, or on evidence, and in my opinion, they’re not too far off the mark.”

“That is my understanding as well,” responded Don Quixote.

He passed on to the third prisoner and asked the question he had asked the others, and the man responded immediately, with great assurance, and said:

“I’m going to my ladies the gurapas for five years because I didn’t have ten gold ducados.”

“I should gladly give twenty,” said Don Quixote, “to free you from this sorrowful burden.”

“That seems to me,” responded the galley slave, “like a man who has money in the middle of the ocean and is dying of hunger and doesn’t have a place where he can buy what he needs. I say this because if I’d had those twenty ducados your grace is offering me now at the right time, I’d have greased the quill of the clerk and sharpened the wits of my attorney, and today I’d be in the middle of the Plaza de Zocodover in Toledo