Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [374]
It so happened that from a group of freed Christians who had come from Barbary he bought the monkey and taught it to jump onto his shoulder at a certain signal and then whisper, or seem to whisper, in his ear. When he had done this, before he would enter any village where he was taking his puppet theater and monkey, he would learn in a nearby village, or from anyone he could, what specific things had happened in the village and to whom; and after he had committed them to memory, the first thing he did was put on his puppet show, sometimes playing one story and sometimes another, but all of them happy, and joyful, and well-known. When the show was over, he proclaimed the abilities of his monkey, telling the audience that he could see everything past and present, but that he had no skill in divining the future. For the answer to each question he would ask for two reales, and for some he lowered the price, depending on the mood of the questioners; on occasion he would stay in houses where he would know certain incidents that had happened to the people who lived there, and even though they did not ask anything because they did not want to pay, he would signal the monkey and then say that the animal had said something that fit perfectly with those incidents. In this fashion he gained remarkable credibility, and everyone came to see him. On other occasions, since he was so intelligent, he responded so that the answers matched the questions, and since no one examined him or pressed him to say how his monkey could be a soothsayer, he made a monkey of them all and filled his pockets.
As soon as he entered the inn he recognized Don Quixote and Sancho, and this made it easy for him to astound Don Quixote and Sancho Panza and everyone at the inn, but it would have cost him dear if Don Quixote had lowered his hand a little when he cut off King Marsilio’s head and destroyed all his knights, as related in the previous chapter.
This is what there is to say about Master Pedro and his monkey.
Returning to Don Quixote of La Mancha, I will say that after he left the inn, he decided to first see the banks of the Ebro River and the surrounding region before entering the city of Zaragoza, since he had enough time for everything before the tourney began. This was his intention as he traveled along the road, and he rode on it for two days without anything occurring that was worth writing down, and then on the third day, as he was riding up a hill, he heard the loud sounds of drums and trumpets and the firing of harquebuses. At first he thought a regiment of soldiers was passing through, and in order to see them he spurred Rocinante and rode up the hill, and when he reached the top he saw at the foot of the hill what appeared to be more than two hundred men armed with a variety of weapons, such as pikes, crossbows, battle-axes, halberds, lances, a few harquebuses, and a good number of bucklers. He rode down the hillside and came so close to the squadron that he clearly saw the banners, observing the colors and noting the devices they displayed, especially one, a standard or pennant of white satin on which was painted, in a very lifelike manner, a donkey that seemed to be a small Sardinian,1 with his head raised, mouth open, and tongue out, as if in the act and posture of braying; around him these two verses were written in large letters:
Two mayors of two towns:
they brayed, and not in vain.
By means of this emblem Don Quixote assumed that these people were from the braying village, and he told Sancho this as he read to him what was written on the banner. He also said that the man who told them about the matter had erred when he said that it had been two councilmen who brayed, because according to the verses on the banner, they had been mayors. To which Sancho Panza responded:
“Señor, that’s of no importance, because it well might be that the councilmen