Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [318]
“I’ll serve my master until he gets to Zaragoza; after that, we’ll work out something.”
In short, the two good squires spoke so much and drank so much that only sleep could stop their tongues and allay their thirst, for it would have been impossible to take it away altogether; and so, with both of them holding on to the almost empty wineskin, and with mouthfuls of food half-chewed in their mouths, they fell asleep, which is where we shall leave them now in order to recount what befell the Knight of the Wood and the Knight of the Sorrowful Face.
CHAPTER XIV
In which the adventure of the Knight of the Wood continues
Among the many words that passed between Don Quixote and the Knight of the Forest, the history says that the Knight of the Wood said to Don Quixote:
“Finally, Señor Knight, I want you to know that my destiny or, I should say, my own free choice, led me to fall in love with the peerless Casildea of Vandalia. I call her without peer because she has none, in the greatness of her stature or in the loftiness of her rank and beauty. This Casildea, then, whom I am describing to you, repaid my virtuous thoughts and courteous desires by having me, as his stepmother did with Hercules, engage in many different kinds of dangers, promising me at the end of each one that at the end of the next my hopes would be realized; but my labors have been linked together for so long that I have lost count, nor do I know which will be the final one that initiates the satisfaction of my virtuous desires. On one occasion she ordered me to challenge that famous giantess of Sevilla called La Giralda,1 who is as valiant and strong as if she were made of bronze and, without moving from one spot, is the most changeable and fickle woman in the world. I came, I saw, I conquered her, and I made her keep still and to the point, because for more than a week only north winds blew. Another time she ordered me to weigh the ancient stones of the corpulent Bulls of Guisando,2 an undertaking better suited to laborers than to knights. On yet another occasion she ordered me to hurl and fling myself into the abyss of Cabra,3 a singular and most fearful danger, and bring her a detailed report of what lies in its dark depths. I halted the movement of La Giralda, I weighed the Bulls of Guisando, I threw myself into the chasm and brought to light what lay hidden there in darkness, and my hopes are deader than dead, and her commands and disdain are more alive than ever. In short, most recently she has ordered me to travel through all the provinces of Spain and have all the knights errant wandering there confess that she alone is the greatest beauty of all the ladies in the world today, and that I am the most valiant and most perfectly enamored knight on earth; to satisfy this request I have already traveled most of Spain and conquered many knights who dared contradict me. But what gratifies me the most and makes me proudest is having conquered in single combat that most famous knight, Don Quixote of La Mancha, and forced him to confess that my Casildea is more beautiful than his Dulcinea; with this one conquest I consider that I have conquered all the knights in the world, because Don Quixote has conquered them all, and since I conquered him, his glory, fame, and honor have passed and been transferred to my person.
The conqueror enjoys more fame and glory
the greater the distinction of the vanquished;4
and as a consequence, the innumerable deeds of the aforementioned Don Quixote are mine and redound to my credit.”
Don Quixote was stunned at what he heard the Knight of the Wood say and was about to tell him he was lying a thousand times over, and he had the You lie on the tip of his tongue but did his best to restrain himself in order to have the Knight of the Wood confess his lie with his own mouth, and so, very calmly, he said:
“With regard to your grace, Señor Knight, having vanquished almost all the knights