Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [159]
“That may be,” responded Sancho, “because very often the same smell comes from me, though at the time I thought it was coming from her grace the lady Dulcinea, but there’s no reason to be surprised, since one devil looks like another.”
“All right, then,” Don Quixote went on, “she finished sifting the wheat and sent it to the mill. What did she do when she read the letter?”
“She didn’t read the letter,” said Sancho, “because she said she didn’t know how to read or write; instead, she tore it into tiny pieces, saying that she didn’t want to give it to anybody else to read because she didn’t want people in the village knowing her secrets, and she was satisfied with what I had told her about the love your grace had for her and the special penance you were doing for her sake. Finally, she told me to tell your grace that she kissed your hands, and had more desire to see you than to write to you, and so she begged and commanded, in view of your letter, that you leave these wild places, and stop doing crazy things, and set out right away for Toboso, if something more important didn’t come along, because she wanted to see your grace very much. She laughed a lot when I told her that your grace was called The Knight of the Sorrowful Face. I asked her if the Basque we met so long ago had come there, and she said he had, and that he was a very fine man. I also asked her about the galley slaves, but she said that so far she hadn’t seen a single one.”
“Everything is fine to this point,” said Don Quixote. “But tell me: when she said goodbye, what jewel did she give you as a reward for the news of me that you brought to her? Because it is a traditional and ancient custom among knights errant and their ladies to give the squires, maidens, or dwarves who bring the knights news of their ladies, or the ladies news of their knights, the gift of a precious jewel in gratitude for the message.”
“That may be true, and I think it’s a good custom; but that must have been in the past; nowadays the custom must be just to give a piece of bread and some cheese, for that’s what my lady Dulcinea handed me over the corral fence when she said goodbye; and it even looked like the cheese was made of sheep’s milk.”
“She is liberal in the extreme,” said Don Quixote, “and if she did not present you with a jewel of gold, no doubt it was because she did not have one near at hand, but it is never the wrong time for a gift: I shall see her and you will have your reward. Do you know what astounds me, Sancho? It seems to me that you flew there and back, because it has taken you a little more than three days to go to Toboso and come back here again, a distance of more than thirty leagues; which leads me to believe that the wise necromancer who watches over my affairs and is my friend (because perforce there is one, there must be one, else I should not be a good knight errant), I say that he must have helped you on your journey without your realizing it, for there are wise men who pick up a knight errant sleeping in his bed, and without his knowing how or by what means, the knight awakens the following day more than a thousand leagues distant from where he went to sleep. If not for this, knights errant could not help each other when they are in danger, as they do constantly. For one may be doing battle in the mountains of Armenia with a dragon, or a fierce monster, or another knight, and matters are going badly for him and he is on the point of death, and then, when you least expect it, another knight appears on a cloud or in a chariot of fire, a knight who is his friend and was in England just a short while before, and who comes to his aid and saves him from death and that night finds himself at home, enjoying his supper; and the distance between the two places is usually two or three thousand leagues. All of this is accomplished through the skill and wisdom of the wise enchanters who watch over these valiant knights. And