Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [39]
When they reached Don Quixote, he was already out of bed, still shouting and engaging in senseless acts, slashing forehand and backhand with his sword and as awake as if he had never slept. They seized him and forced him back to bed, and after he had calmed down somewhat, he turned to speak to the priest and said:
“In truth, Señor Archbishop Turpín, it is a great discredit to those of us called the Twelve Peers to do nothing more and allow the courtier knights victory in this tourney, when we, the knights who seek adventures, have won glory on the three previous days.”
“Be still, my friend,” said the priest, “for it is God’s will that fortune changes, and that what is lost today is won tomorrow; your grace should tend to your health now, for it seems to me your grace must be fatigued, if not badly wounded.”
“Not wounded,” said Don Quixote, “but bruised and broken, there is no doubt about that, for the ignoble Don Roland beat me mercilessly with the branch of an oak tree, all on account of envy, because he sees that I alone am his rival in valorous deeds. But my name would not be Reinaldos de Montalbán if, upon rising from this bed, I did not repay him in spite of all his enchantments; for now, bring me something to eat, since I know that is what I need most at present, and leave my revenge to me.”
They did as he asked: they gave him food, and he went back to sleep, and they marveled at his madness.
That night, the housekeeper burned and consigned to the flames all the books that were in the corral and in the house, and some must have been in the fire that should have been preserved in perpetual archives; but their destiny, and the sloth of the examiner, did not permit this, and so, as the proverb says, at times the just must pay for sinners.
One of the remedies that the priest and the barber devised for their friend’s illness was to wall up and seal off the room that held the books, so that when he got up he would not find them—perhaps by removing the cause, they would end the effect—and they would say that an enchanter had taken the books away, along with the room and everything in it; and this is what they did, with great haste. Two days later Don Quixote got out of bed, and the first thing he did was to go to see his books, and since he could not find the library where he had left it, he walked back and forth looking for it. He went up to the place where the door had been, and he felt it with his hands, and his eyes looked all around, and he did not say a word; but after some time had passed, he asked his housekeeper what had become of the library and his books. The housekeeper, who had been well-instructed in how she should respond, said:
“What library and what anything is your grace looking for? There’s no more library and no more books in this house, because the devil himself took them away.”
“It wasn’t a devil,” replied the niece, “but an enchanter who came on a cloud one night, after the day your grace left here, and he dismounted from the serpent he was riding and entered the library, and I don’t know what he did inside, but after a little while he flew up through the roof and left the house full of smoke; and when we had the presence of mind to see what he had done, we could find no books and no library; the only thing the housekeeper and I remember very clearly is that as the evil old man was leaving, he shouted that because of the secret enmity he felt for the owner of the books and the room, he had done damage in the house, which we would see soon enough. He also said he was called Muñatón the Wise.”
“He must have said Frestón,”2 said Don Quixote.
“I don’t know,” the housekeeper replied, “if he was called Frestón or Fritón; all I know is that his name ended in tón.”
“That is true,” said Don Quixote. “He is a wise enchanter, a great enemy