Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [108]
Then he looked up and saw that his master had stopped and with the tip of his lance was attempting to lift some kind of bundle lying on the ground, and therefore he hurried to offer his help, if necessary; he reached Don Quixote just as he lifted, with the tip of his lance, a saddle cushion with a traveling case attached to it, half rotting, or completely rotting and falling to pieces, but weighing so much that Sancho had to dismount and pick them up, and his master told him to see what was in the traveling case.
Sancho did so very quickly, and although the case was closed with a chain and padlock, it was so worn and rotten that he could see what was inside: four shirts of fine cambric and some other items of linen as curious as they were clean, and in a handkerchief he found a nice pile of gold escudos; and when he saw them, he said:
“Glory be to heaven for sending us a profitable adventure!”
And, searching further, he discovered a small diary that was richly decorated. Don Quixote asked for this but told him to keep the money for himself. Sancho kissed his hands in gratitude and emptied the case of its linen, which he packed away in the sack of provisions. All of this was observed by Don Quixote, who said:
“It seems to me, Sancho, and it cannot be otherwise, that some traveler lost his way in these mountains and was set upon by ruffians, who must have killed him and carried him to this remote spot to bury him.”
“That can’t be right,” responded Sancho, “because if they were thieves, they wouldn’t have left the money here.”
“That is true,” said Don Quixote, “and therefore I cannot guess or surmise what this may be; but wait: we shall see if there is something written in this diary that will allow us to investigate and learn what we wish to know.”
He opened the book, and the first thing he found there, in a kind of rough draft, though written in a very fine hand, was a sonnet, and reading aloud so that Sancho could hear the poem, he read:
Either Love has too little understanding,
or too much cruelty, or else my grief’
s not equal to its cause though it condemns me
to suffer this, the harshest kind of torment.
But if Love is a god, then logic tells us
that he is ignorant of nothing, teaches
that a god’s not cruel. Then, who has ordained
this terrible anguish that I adore?
If I say you, Phyllis, then I am wrong,
for evil has no place in so much good,
nor does my woe rain down on me from heav’n.
Soon I must die, of that I can be sure;
when the cause of the sickness is unknown
only a miracle can find the cure.
“From this poem,” said Sancho, “you can’t learn anything, unless that filly there’s the one that leads the way out of the tangle.”
“What filly?” said Don Quixote.
“It seems to me,” said Sancho, “that your grace mentioned some filly there.”
“I said Phyllis,” responded Don Quixote, “which is undoubtedly the name of the lady about whom the author of this sonnet is complaining; and, by my faith, he seems a reasonable poet, or I know little of the art.”
“Then,” said Sancho, “does your grace also know about poems?”
“More than you think,” responded Don Quixote, “as you will see when you carry a letter, written in verse from top to bottom, to my lady Dulcinea of Toboso. Because I want you to know, Sancho, that all or most of the knights errant of a bygone day were great troubadours and great musicians; for these two talents, or endowments, I should say, are attributes of enamored knights errant. Although the truth is that the strophes of the knights of long ago have more spirit in them than skill.”
“Your grace, read some more,” said Sancho, “and soon you’ll find something that will satisfy us.”
Don Quixote turned the page and said:
“This is prose and seems to be a letter.”
“The kind of letter that