Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [340]
“Señor Knight, if your grace is not following a specific route, as those searching for adventures usually do not, your grace should come with us, and you will see one of the finest and richest weddings ever celebrated in La Mancha, or for many leagues around.”
Don Quixote asked him if it was a prince’s wedding that he was praising so highly.
“No,” responded the student, “not a prince, but the richest farmer in this entire land, and the most beautiful farmgirl men have ever seen. The preparations for the wedding celebration are extraordinary and remarkable, because it will be held in a meadow near the bride’s village; she is always called fair Quiteria, and the groom is called rich Camacho; she is eighteen and he is twenty-two; they are equals, though certain inquisitive people who have the lineages of the entire world memorized claim that fair Quiteria’s is superior to Camacho’s, but nobody thinks about that nowadays: wealth has the power to mend a good many cracks. In fact, Camacho is extremely generous, and he has taken a notion to weave branches into a bower to cover the entire meadow, so that the sun will have great difficulty if it wants to come in to visit the green grass covering the ground. He also has arranged for dances, with swords and with bells, for there are in his village people who are excellent at ringing and shaking them, and I won’t say anything about the heel-tappers, for the general opinion is that he has a good number of them ready; but none of the things I’ve mentioned, or the many others that I’ve omitted, are what will make this wedding memorable, but rather the things I imagine a desperate Basilio will do. This Basilio is a shepherd from the same village as Quiteria, and his house shared a wall with the house of Quiteria’s parents, allowing love the opportunity to renew in the world the long-forgotten loves of Pyramus and Thisbe, because Basilio loved Quiteria from his earliest, tenderest youth, and she responded to his desire with a thousand honest favors, so that in the village the love of the two children, Basilio and Quiteria, was recounted with amusement. As they grew older, Quiteria’s father decided to deny Basilio the access to his house that he once had enjoyed, and to spare himself mistrust and endless suspicions, he arranged for his daughter to marry rich Camacho, for it did not seem a good idea to marry her to Basilio, who was better endowed by nature than by fortune; if the truth be told, without envy, he is the most agile youth we know, a great hurler of the bar, an excellent wrestler, a fine pelota player; he runs like a deer, leaps like a goat, and plays bowls as if he were enchanted; he sings like a lark, plays the guitar so well he makes it speak, and, most of all, he can fence with the best of them.”
“For that one accomplishment,” said Don Quixote, “the youth deserved not only to marry fair Quiteria but Queen Guinevere herself, if she were alive today, in spite of Lancelot and all the others who might wish to prevent it.”
“Try telling that to my wife!” said Sancho Panza, who so far had been listening in silence. “The only thing she wants is for everybody to marry their equal, following the proverb that says ‘Like goes to like.’ What I’d like is for this good Basilio, and I’m growing very fond of him, to marry Señora Quiteria; people who keep people who love each other from marrying should rest in peace, world without end, and I was going to say the opposite.”
“If all people who love each other were to marry,” said Don Quixote, “it would deprive parents of the right and privilege to marry their children to the person and at the time they ought to marry; if daughters were entitled