Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [259]
“That is really good!” responded Don Quixote. “Books that are printed with a royal license and with the approval of those officials to whom they are submitted, and read to widespread delight, and celebrated by great and small, poor and rich, educated and ignorant, lowborn and gentry, in short, by all kinds of persons of every rank and station: can they possibly be a lie, especially when they bear so close a resemblance to the truth and tell us about the father, the mother, the nation, the family, the age, the birthplace, and the great deeds, point by point and day by day, of the knight, or knights, in question? Be quiet, your grace, and do not say such blasphemies, and believe me when I tell you what you, as an intelligent man, must do in this matter, which is to read these books, and then you will see the pleasure you derive from them.
If you do not agree, then tell me: is there any greater joy than seeing, before our very eyes, you might say, a great lake of boiling pitch, and in it, swimming and writhing about, there are many snakes, serpents, lizards, and many other kinds of fierce and fearsome creatures, and from the middle of the lake there comes an extremely sad voice, saying: ‘Thou, O knight, whosoever thou mayest be, who looketh upon this fearful lake, if thou wishest to grasp the treasure hidden beneath these ebon waters, display the valor of thy mighty heart and throw thyself into the midst of its black and burning liquid, for if thou wilt not, thou canst not be worthy of gazing upon the wondrous marvels contained and enclosed within the seven castles of the seven enchantresses which lieth beneath this blackness.’ And no sooner has the knight heard the fearsome voice than without hesitating or stopping to consider the danger he faces, and without even stripping off the weight of his heavy armor, he commends himself to God and his lady and throws himself into the middle of the boiling lake, and when he cannot see or imagine where he will land, he finds himself among flowering meadows even more beautiful than the Elysian Fields. There it seems to him that the sky is more translucent and the sun shines with a new clarity; before him lies a peaceful grove of trees so green and leafy, their verdure brings joy to his eyes, while his ears are charmed by the sweet, untutored song of the infinite number of small, brightly colored birds that fly among the intricate branches. Here he discovers a brook whose cool waters, like liquid crystal, run over fine sand and white pebbles that seem like sifted gold and perfect pearls; there he sees a fountain artfully composed of varicolored jasper and smooth marble; over there he sees another fountain fashioned as a grotto where tiny clamshells and the coiled white-and-yellow houses of the snail are arranged with conscious disorder and mixed with bits of shining glass and counterfeit emeralds, forming so varied a pattern that art, imitating nature, here seems to surpass it. Suddenly, there appears before him a fortified castle or elegant fortress whose walls are made of solid gold, its parapets of diamonds, its doors of sapphires; in short, it is so wonderfully built that although its materials are nothing less than diamonds, carbuncles, rubies, pearls, gold, and emeralds, its workmanship is even finer.
And after this, is there any more marvelous sight than seeing a good number of damsels come out through the gate of the castle, wearing dresses so splendid and sumptuous that if I began now to describe them, as the histories do, I should never finish; and then, the maiden who seems the leader among them takes by the hand the bold knight who threw himself into the boiling lake, and, without saying a word, guides him inside the rich fortress or castle and has him strip as naked as the day as he was born and bathes him in warm water and then smoothes his entire body with sweet-smelling ointments and dresses him in a shirt of finest silk, all fragrant and perfumed, and then another damsel comes and covers his shoulders with a cloak that, they say, is worth at least a city and even more?