Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [237]
At this point Don Quixote could not refrain from responding, and placing himself between the two men and separating them, and laying the saddle on the ground where everyone could see it until the truth had been determined, he said:
“Now your graces may clearly and plainly see the error of this good squire, for he calls a basin what was, is, and will be the helmet of Mambrino, which I took from him in righteous combat, thereby becoming its lawful and legitimate owner! I shall not intervene in the matter of the packsaddle, but I can say that my squire, Sancho, asked my permission to remove the trappings from the steed of this vanquished coward; I granted it, he took them, and with regard to those trappings being transformed into a packsaddle, I can give only the ordinary explanation: these are the kinds of transformations seen in matters of chivalry; to confirm this, Sancho my son, run and bring here the helmet that this good man claims is a basin.”
“By God, Señor,” said Sancho, “if this is the only proof we have of what your grace has said, then the helmet of Malino is as much a basin as this good man’s trappings are a packsaddle!”
“Do as I say,” replied Don Quixote, “for not everything in this castle must be ruled by enchantment.”
Sancho went for the basin and brought it back, and as soon as Don Quixote saw it, he took it in his hands and said:
“Just look, your graces; how does this squire presume to say that this is a basin and not the helmet I say it is? I swear by the order of chivalry which I profess that this helmet is the same one I took from him, and nothing has been added to it or taken away.”
“There’s no doubt about that,” said Sancho, “because from the time my master won it until now, he’s fought only one battle wearing it, and that was when he freed the luckless men in chains; if it wasn’t for this basihelm,1 things wouldn’t have gone too well for him because there was a lot of stone-throwing in that fight.”
CHAPTER XLV
In which questions regarding the helmet of Mambrino and the packsaddle are finally resolved, as well as other entirely true adventures
“What do your graces think of what they’re saying, Señores?” said the barber. “These gentlefolk are still insisting that this isn’t a basin but a helmet.”
“And whoever says it is not,” said Don Quixote, “if he is a gentleman, I shall show him that he lies, and if he is a squire, that he lies a thousand times over.”
Our barber, who was present through all of this, knew Don Quixote’s madness so well that he wanted to encourage his lunacies and, by carrying the joke even further, give everyone a good reason to laugh, and so speaking to the second barber, he said:
“Señor Knight, or whoever you may be, you should know that I too follow your trade and have held my certificate1 for more than twenty years, and know very well all the tools of barbering, without exception; for a time I was even a soldier in my youth, and I also know what a helmet is, and a morion, and a full sallet, and other things related to soldiering, I mean to say, the kinds of weapons that soldiers use; and I say, barring a better opinion and bowing always to better judgment, that this piece in front of us, which this good gentleman is holding in his hands, not only is not a barber’s basin, but is as far from being one as white is from black and truth from falsehood; I also say that this, though a helmet, is not a complete helmet.”
“No, of course not,” said Don Quixote, “for half of it, the visor, is missing.”
“That is true,” said the priest, who had understood the intention of his friend the barber.
And the same was affirmed by Cardenio, Don Fernando, and his companions, and even the judge, if he had not been so involved in the matter