Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [428]
Sancho listened to him very attentively and attempted to commit his advice to memory, like a man who intended to follow it and use it to bring the gestation of his governorship to a successful delivery. And so Don Quixote continued, and he said:
“With regard to how you should govern your person and house, Sancho, the first thing I recommend is that you keep clean, and that you trim your nails and not allow them to grow, as some men do whose ignorance has led them to believe that long nails beautify their hands, as if those superfluous growths that they refuse to cut were nails, when they are actually the claws of a lizard-eating kestrel: a filthy and extraordinary abuse. Do not go around, Sancho, unbelted and negligent; slovenly clothing is an indication of a listless spirit, unless slovenliness and negligence are actually a sign of shrewdness, as was judged to be the case with Julius Caesar. Determine with intelligence the worth of your position, and if it allows you to give your servants livery, let it be modest and useful rather than showy and splendid, and divide it between your servants and the poor: I mean that if you are going to dress six pages, dress three of them and three poor men, and in this way you will have pages both in heaven and on the ground; this unusual manner of giving livery cannot be understood by the vainglorious. Do not eat garlic or onions lest their smell reveal your peasant origins. Walk slowly; speak calmly, but not in a way that makes it seem you are listening to yourself, for all affectation is wrong. Eat sparingly at midday and even less for supper, for the health of the entire body is forged in the workshop of the stomach. Be temperate in your drinking, remembering that too much wine cannot keep either a secret or a promise. Be careful, Sancho, not to chew with your mouth full or to eructate in front of anyone.”
“I don’t understand eructate,” said Sancho.
And Don Quixote said:
“Eructate, Sancho, means to belch, which is one of the crudest words in the Castilian language, although it is very expressive, and so educated people have had recourse to Latin, and instead of belch they say eructate, and instead of belches, eructations; and if some do not understand these terms, it matters very little, for in time their use will be introduced into the language and they will easily be understood; this enriches the language, over which the common people and usage have control.”
“Truly, Señor,” said Sancho, “one of the pieces of advice and counsel that I plan to carry in my memory will be not to belch, because I tend to do that very often.”
“Eructate, Sancho, not belch,” said Don Quixote.
“I’ll say eructate from now on,” responded Sancho, “and by my faith, I won’t forget.”
“Sancho, you also should not mix into your speech the host of proverbs that you customarily use, for although proverbs are short maxims, the ones you bring in are often so far-fetched that they seem more like nonsense than like maxims.”
“God can remedy that,” responded Sancho, “because I know more proverbs than a book, and so many of them come into my mouth at one time when I talk that they fight with one another to get out, but my tongue tosses out the first ones it finds, even if they’re not to the point. But I’ll be careful from now on to say the ones that suit the gravity of my position, because in a well-stocked house, supper is soon cooked; and if you cut the cards, you don’t deal; and the man who sounds the alarm is safe; and for giving and keeping, you need some sense.”
“Go on, Sancho!” said Don Quixote. “Force the proverbs in, string them together one after another on a thread! No one will stop you! My mother punishes me and I deceive her! I tell you to avoid proverbs, and in an instant you have come out with a litany of them that have as much to do with what we are discussing as the