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But Don Quixote did not say a word, and when they had pulled him all the way out, they saw that his eyes were closed, as if he were sleeping. They laid him on the ground and untied him, and still he did not awaken, but they turned him this way and that, and shook him and moved him so much, that after a fairly long time he regained consciousness, stretching as if he were waking from a deep and profound sleep, and looking around, as if in alarm, he said:

“May God forgive you, friends, for you have taken me away from the sweetest life and most pleasant sights that any human being has ever seen or experienced. In truth, now I realize that all the pleasures of this life pass like shadows and dreams, or wither like the flowers in the field. O unfortunate Montesinos! O gravely wounded Durandarte! O luckless Belerma! O weeping Guadiana, and you unhappy daughters of Ruidera, who show in your waters the number of tears shed by your beautiful eyes!”

The cousin and Sancho listened to the words of Don Quixote, who spoke them as if he were tearing them with great sorrow from the very depths of his being. They begged him to explain what he was saying and to tell them what he had seen in that hell.

“You call it hell?” said Don Quixote. “Do not call it that, for it does not deserve the name, as you shall soon see.”

He asked them to give him something to eat, for he was very hungry. They spread the cousin’s burlap on the green grass, had recourse to the provisions in the saddlebags, and the three of them sat in companionable friendship and ate both dinner and supper at the same time. When the burlap had been cleared, Don Quixote of La Mancha said:

“Let no one get up, my friends, and listen to me carefully.”

CHAPTER XXIII

Regarding the remarkable things that the great Don Quixote said he saw in the depths of the Cave of Montesinos, so impossible and extraordinary that this adventure has been considered apocryphal

It must have been four in the afternoon when the sun, hidden by clouds, its light faint and its rays temperate, gave Don Quixote an opportunity free of oppressive heat to recount what he had seen in the Cave of Montesinos to his two illustrious listeners, and he began in the following manner:

“In this dungeon, at a depth of approximately twelve or fourteen escudos,1 on the right-hand side there is a concavity, a space capable of holding a large wagon with its mules. A small amount of light comes in through openings in the earth’s surface. I saw this concavity and space when I was already weary and tired of hanging and being suspended from the rope as I moved through that dark nether region without a fixed and certain route, and so I decided to go into the space and rest a while. I shouted to you, asking that you not let out more rope until I told you to, but you probably did not hear me. I picked up the rope you sent down, made it into a coil or ring, and sat on it, becoming very thoughtful as I considered how I would reach the bottom without anything to support me; and when I was deep in this thought and confusion, suddenly, and without my wishing it, I was overcome by a profound sleep; and when I least expected it, not knowing how or why, I awoke and found myself in the midst of the most beautiful, pleasant, and charming meadow that nature could create or the most discerning human mind imagine. I opened my eyes wide, rubbed them, and saw that I was not sleeping but really was awake; even so, I felt my head and chest to verify whether it was I myself or some false and counterfeit phantom sitting there, but my sense of touch, my feelings, the reasoned discourse I held with myself, verified for me that, there and then, I was the same person I am here and now. Then there appeared before my eyes a royal and sumptuous palace or castle whose walls and ramparts seemed to be made of clear and transparent crystal; two large doors opened, and I saw that through them there emerged and came toward me a venerable ancient dressed in a long hooded cloak of purple baize