Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [287]
“That’s exactly what I hate most, Señor Sansón,” said Sancho. “My master goes charging at a hundred armed men like a greedy boy attacking half a dozen melons. Good Lord, Señor Bachelor! There are times to attack and times to retreat, and not everything’s ‘Charge for Santiago and Spain!’2 And besides, I’ve heard it said, I think by my master himself, if I remember correctly, that between the extremes of cowardice and recklessness lies the middle way of valor, and if this is true, I don’t want him to run for no reason or attack when the numbers demand something else. But above all, I advise my master that if he wants to take me with him, it has to be on the condition that he’ll do all the battles and I won’t be obliged to do anything except look after his person in questions of cleanliness and food; as far as this goes, I’ll do everything he asks, but to think that I’ll raise my sword, even against lowborn scoundrels with their caps and axes, is to think something that will never happen. I, Señor Sansón, don’t plan to win fame as a valiant man but as the best and most loyal squire who ever served a knight errant; and if my master, Don Quixote, as a reward for my many good services, wants to give me one of the many ínsulas that his grace says are to be found out there, I’ll be very happy to accept it; and if he doesn’t give it to me, I’m a human being, and a man shouldn’t live depending on anybody but God; besides, bread will taste as good, and maybe even better, whether I’m a governor or not; for all I know, in those governorships the devil could have set a snare for me that will make me stumble and fall and knock out all my teeth. Sancho I was born, and Sancho I plan to die; but even so, if heaven should be so kind as to offer me, without too much trouble or risk, an ínsula or something else like that, I’m not such a fool that I’d turn it down, because, as they say: ‘When they give you a heifer, don’t forget to bring a rope,’ and ‘When good comes along, lock it in your house.’”
“You, brother Sancho,” said Carrasco, “have spoken like a university professor, but still, trust in God and in Señor Don Quixote, who will give you a kingdom, not merely an ínsula.”
“Whatever it is, it’s all the same to me,” responded Sancho, “though I can tell Señor Carrasco that my master won’t be tossing that kingdom into a sack with holes in it; I’ve taken my own pulse and I’m healthy enough to rule kingdoms and govern ínsulas, and this is something I’ve already told my master.”
“Be careful, Sancho,” said Sansón, “for offices can alter behavior, and it might be that when you are governor you won’t know the mother who bore you.”
“That’s something that may apply,” responded Sancho, “to people of low birth, but not to those who have in their souls a little of the spirit of Old Christians, like me. No, first get to know my character and then tell me if I could be ungrateful to anybody!”
“God willing,” said Don Quixote, “we shall see when the governorship comes along, for I seem to see it right before my eyes.”
Having said this, he asked the bachelor, if he was a poet, to be so kind as to compose a few verses for him that would deal with the farewell he intended to make to his lady Dulcinea of Toboso, and he said that at the beginning of each line he was to place a letter of her name, so that when one reached the last verse and read all the first letters together, it would say: Dulcinea of Toboso.
The bachelor responded that although he was not one of the famous poets of Spain, who, as people said, did not number more than three and a half, he would be sure to write the lines, although he found a great difficulty in their composition because the number of letters in her name was seventeen, and if he made four Castilian stanzas of four octosyllabic lines each, there would