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“What are you saying, Sancho, about ladyships, ínsulas, and vassals?” responded Juana Panza, which was the name of Sancho’s wife; they were not kin, but in La Mancha wives usually take their husbands’ family name.3

“Don’t be in such a hurry, Juana, to learn everything all at once; it’s enough that I’m telling you the truth, so sew up your mouth. I’ll just tell you this, in passing: there’s nothing nicer in the world for a man than being the honored squire of a knight errant seeking adventures. Even though it’s true that most don’t turn out as well as the man would like, because out of a hundred that you find, ninety-nine tend to turn out wrong and twisted. I know this from experience, because in some I’ve been tossed in a blanket, and in others I’ve been beaten, but even so, it’s a fine thing to be out looking for things to happen, crossing mountains, searching forests, climbing peaks, visiting castles, and staying in inns whenever you please and not paying a devil’s maravedí for anything.”

While Sancho Panza and Juana Panza, his wife, were having this conversation, Don Quixote’s housekeeper and niece welcomed him, and undressed him, and put him in his old bed. He stared at them, his eyes transfixed, and did not understand where he was. The priest instructed the niece to look after her uncle with great care and to be very sure she did not allow him to escape again, telling her all that they had been obliged to do to bring him home. At this the two women began to cry out to heaven again, and to renew their curses of books of chivalry, and to ask heaven to throw the authors of so many lies and so much foolishness into the bottomless pit. In short, they were distraught and fearful that they would again find themselves without a master and an uncle at the very moment he showed some improvement, and in fact, it turned out just as they imagined.

But the author of this history, although he has investigated with curiosity and diligence the feats performed by Don Quixote on his third sally, has found no account of them, at least not in authenticated documents; their fame has been maintained only in the memories of La Mancha, which tell us that the third time Don Quixote left home he went to Zaragoza and took part in some famous tourneys held in that city, and there things happened to him worthy of his valor and fine intelligence. Nor could he find or learn anything about Don Quixote’s final end, and never would have, if good fortune had not presented him with an ancient physician who had in his possession a leaden box that he claimed to have found in the ruined foundations of an old hermitage that was being renovated; in this box he discovered some parchments on which, in Gothic script, Castilian verses celebrated many of the knight’s exploits and described the beauty of Dulcinea of Toboso, the figure of Rocinante, the fidelity of Sancho Panza, and the tomb of Don Quixote, with various epitaphs and eulogies to his life and customs.

Those that were legible and could be transcribed are the ones that the trustworthy author of this new and unparalleled history has set down here. This author does not ask compensation from his readers for the immense labor required to investigate and search all the Manchegan archives in order to bring this history to light; he asks only that they afford it the same credit that judicious readers give to the books of chivalry that are esteemed so highly in the world; with this he will consider himself well-paid and satisfied, and encouraged to seek and publish other histories, if not as true, then at least as inventive and entertaining as this one.

The first words written on the parchment discovered in the lead box were these:

THE ACADEMICIANS OF LA ARGAMASILLA, IN LA MANCHA,

ON THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE VALIANT

DON QUIXOTE OF LA MANCHA,

Hoc Scripserunt

IGNORAMUS, ACADEMICIAN OF LA ARGAMASILLA,

AT THE TOMB OF DON QUIXOTE

Epitaph

The numbskull who so bravely draped La Mancha

with more rich spoils than Jason brought to Crete,

the mind that