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CHAPTER XVI

Regarding what befell Don Quixote with a prudent knight of La Mancha

With the joy, contentment, and pride that have already been mentioned, Don Quixote continued his journey, imagining, because of his recent victory, that he was the world’s most valiant knight errant of the age; he considered any adventures that might befall him from that time on as already completed and brought to a happy conclusion; he held enchantments and enchanters in contempt; he did not recall the countless beatings he had received in the course of his chivalric exploits, or the stones that had knocked out half his teeth, or the ingratitude of the galley slaves, or the Yanguesans’ audacious rainstorm of staffs. In short, he said to himself that if he could find the art, means, or manner to disenchant his lady Dulcinea, he would not envy the greatest good fortune that ever was achieved or could be achieved by the most fortunate knight errant of past times. He was completely lost in these thoughts when Sancho said:

“Isn’t it funny, Señor, that I still can see the awful outsize nose of my compadre Tomé Cecial?”

“Do you still believe, Sancho, that the Knight of the Mirrors was Bachelor Carrasco, and your compadre Tomé Cecil was his squire?”

“I don’t know what to say about that,” responded Sancho. “All I know is that he was the only one who could have told me what he did about my house, my wife, and my children, and except for the nose, his face was the face of Tomé Cecial, just as I have seen it so often in my village and in his house that shares a wall with mine, and the sound of his voice was the same.”

“Let us reason about this, Sancho,” replied Don Quixote. “Come, does it make sense that Bachelor Sansón Carrasco should appear as a knight errant, armed with offensive and defensive weapons, to do battle with me? Have I, by chance, been his enemy? Have I ever given him reason to bear me ill will? Am I his rival, or does he profess arms, that he would be envious of the fame I have won through their exercise?”

“But what do we say, Señor,” responded Sancho, “about that knight, whoever he was, looking so much like Bachelor Carrasco, and his squire looking like my compadre Tomé Cecial? If it’s enchantment, like your grace says, weren’t there any other men in the world they could have looked like?”

“Everything is artifice and mere appearance,” responded Don Quixote, “devised by the evil magicians who pursue me; foreseeing that I would emerge victorious from the battle, they arranged for the defeated knight to show the face of my friend the bachelor, so that the friendship I have for him would be placed between the edges of my sword, and stay the severity of my arm, and temper the righteous anger of my heart, and in this manner the one who was attempting to take my life through trickery and falsehood would save his own. As proof of this you already know, O Sancho, through experience that will not allow you to lie or deceive, how easy it is for enchanters to transform one face into another, making the beautiful ugly and the ugly beautiful; no more than two days ago you saw with your own eyes the beauty and grace of the peerless Dulcinea in all her natural perfection and harmony, and I saw her as an ugly, lowborn peasant girl with cataracts in her eyes and a foul smell in her mouth; further, if the perverse enchanter dared to make so evil a transformation, it is not difficult to believe that he transformed Sansón Carrasco and your compadre in order to steal the glory of conquest right out of my hands. But despite this I am comforted, because in the end, regardless of his shape and appearance, I have conquered my enemy.”

“God knows the truth of all things,” responded Sancho.

And since he knew that the transformation of Dulcinea had been his own trickery and deception, the chimerical ideas of his master did not satisfy him, but he did not wish to respond so as not to say anything that might reveal his lie.

They were engaged in this conversation when