Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [303]
A bad day for you, O Frenchmen,
that defeat at Roncesvalles.
“By heaven, Sancho,” said Don Quixote when he heard him, “I doubt anything good will happen to us this night. Do you hear what that laborer is singing?”
“I do,” responded Sancho, “but what does the rout at Roncesvalles3 have to do with us? He could just as easily be singing the ballad of Calaínos, and it wouldn’t change whether we have good or bad luck in this business.”
By now the laborer had reached them, and Don Quixote asked:
“Can you tell me, my friend, and may God send you good fortune, the location of the palaces of the peerless princess Doña Dulcinea of Toboso?”
“Señor,” the young man responded, “I’m a stranger, and I’ve only been in town a few days, working for a rich farmer in his fields; the priest and the sacristan live in that house in front of us, and either one or both of them will be able to tell your grace about that lady the princess, because they have the list of everybody who lives in Toboso, though it seems to me that no princess lives anywhere around here; but there are lots of ladies, and they’re so distinguished that each one could be a princess in her own house.”
“Well, friend, the lady I am asking about,” said Don Quixote, “must be one of them.”
“That might be,” responded the young man, “and now goodbye: dawn is breaking.”
And prodding his mules, he waited for no more questions. Sancho, seeing his master somewhat baffled and in a bad humor, said:
“Señor, it’s almost day and it wouldn’t be a good idea to let the sun find us out on the street; it would be better for us to leave the city, and then your grace can wait in some nearby woods, and I’ll come back in broad daylight and search every corner of this town for the house, castle, or palace of my lady, and I’ll have to be pretty unlucky not to find it; and when I do, I’ll talk to her grace and tell her where your grace is waiting for her to give you leave to see her and tell you how you can without doing damage to her honor and good name.”
“You have, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “enclosed a thousand wise statements within the circle of a few brief words: the advice you have just given pleases me, and I accept it very willingly. Come, my friend, and let us look for the place where I shall wait while you, as you have said, will come back to find, see, and speak to my lady, from whose intelligence and courtesy I hope for more than wondrous favors.”
Sancho was desperate to get his master outside the town so that he would not discover the lie of the response from Dulcinea that he had brought to him in the Sierra Morena, and so he hurried their departure, which took place without delay, and two miles from the town they found a stand of trees or a wood where Don Quixote waited while Sancho returned to the city to speak with Dulcinea; and on this mission things occurred that demand a renewal of both attention and belief.
CHAPTER X
Which recounts Sancho’s ingenuity in enchanting the lady Dulcinea, and other events as ridiculous as they are true
When the author of this great history came to recount what is recounted in this chapter, he says he would have preferred to pass over it in silence, fearful it would not be given credence, for the madness of Don Quixote here reached the limits and boundaries of the greatest madnesses that can be imagined, and even passed two crossbow shots beyond them. But finally, despite this fear and trepidation, he wrote down the mad acts just as Don Quixote performed them, not adding or subtracting an atom of truth from the history and not concerning himself about the accusations that he was a liar, which might be made against him; and he was right, because truth may be stretched thin and not break, and it always floats on the surface of the lie, like oil on water.
And so, continuing his history, he says that as soon as Don Quixote had entered the