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By Root 1030 0

and left him alone, and a short while later the barber brought him some food. Then, when they had thought carefully about how they would accomplish what they desired, the priest had an idea that would appeal to Don Quixote and achieve what they wanted; he told the barber that what he had thought was that he would dress in the clothes of a wandering maiden, and the barber would look as much like a squire as possible, and they would go to the place where Don Quixote was doing penance, the maiden pretending to be an afflicted damsel in distress who would ask a boon, which, as a valiant knight errant, he could not fail to grant. And the boon would be to follow her wherever she might lead, to undo a great wrong that an evil knight had done unto her; and she would implore him as well not to request that she remove her mask, or ask any other question regarding her estate and fortune until such time as he had righted the injustice so wrongfully done unto her by that base knight; the priest believed beyond any doubt that Don Quixote would comply with everything asked of him in those terms, and in this manner they would take him from that place and bring him home to his village, where they would try to see if there was a cure for his strange madness.

CHAPTER XXVII

Concerning how the priest and the barber carried out their plan, along with other matters worthy of being recounted in this great history

The barber did not think the priest’s invention was a bad idea; in fact, it seemed so good that they immediately began to put it into effect. They asked the innkeeper’s wife for a skirt and bonnet, giving her as security one of the priest’s new cassocks. The barber made a long beard out of a gray or red oxtail where the innkeeper hung his comb. The innkeeper’s wife asked why they wanted those things. The priest told her briefly about Don Quixote’s madness, and how the disguises were just the thing to get him out of the mountains, which is where he was now. Then the innkeeper and his wife realized that the madman had been their guest, the one who made the balm and was the master of the squire who had been tossed in the blanket, and they recounted to the priest everything that had happened, not keeping silent about the thing Sancho had kept so secret. In short, the innkeeper’s wife outfitted the priest in the most remarkable fashion: she dressed him in a woolen skirt with black velvet stripes a hand-span wide, and all of them slashed, and a bodice of green velvet adorned with white satin binding, and both the bodice and the skirt must have been made in the days of King Wamba.1 The priest did not permit his head to be adorned, but he did put on a cap of quilted linen that he wore to sleep at night, and tied it around the front with a band of black taffeta, and with another band he fashioned a mask that covered his beard and face very well; he pulled his broad-brimmed hat down tightly on his head, and it was so large he could have used it as a parasol; he wrapped himself in his cape and mounted his mule sidesaddle; the barber, with a beard somewhere between red and white that hung down to his waist and was made, as we have said, from the tail of a reddish ox, mounted his mule as well.

They said goodbye to everyone, including the good Maritornes, who promised to say a rosary, although a sinner, and ask God to grant them success in so arduous and Christian an enterprise as the one they had undertaken.

But as soon as he had ridden out of the inn, it occurred to the priest that he was committing an error by dressing in that manner, for it was an indecent thing for a member of the clergy to do, no matter how important the end; he told this to the barber and asked him to trade clothes with him, since it would be better if the barber was the damsel in distress and the priest played the part of the squire; in this way his office would be less profaned, but if the barber did not want to make the change, he had decided to go no further, even if the devil made off with Don Quixote.

At this point Sancho approached, and when he saw the two of