Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [433]
To which Don Quixote said:
“Your grace has spoken like the person you are, for in the mouths of virtuous ladies there can be nothing that is wicked; Dulcinea will be more fortunate and renowned in the world for your highness’s praise than for all the praises of the most eloquent men on earth.”
“Well now, Señor Don Quixote,” replied the duchess, “it is time to eat supper, and the duke must be waiting; come, your grace, and let us eat, and retire early, for the journey you made yesterday to Candaya was not so short that it has not caused you some weariness.”
“I feel none at all, Señora,” responded Don Quixote, “for I can swear to Your Excellency that never in my life have I mounted a calmer animal, or one with a better gait, than Clavileño, and I do not know what could have moved Malambruno to destroy so swift and gentle a mount and burn him for no reason at all.”
“As for that, I can imagine,” responded the duchess, “that he repented of the wrong he had done to Countess Trifaldi and her company, and to other persons, and the many acts of wickedness he must have committed as a wizard and an enchanter, and he wanted to put an end to all the devices of his profession, and since the wooden horse was the principal one that caused him the most concern wandering from country to country, he burned Clavileño so that with those ashes, and the trophy of the scroll, the valor of the great Don Quixote of La Mancha would be made immortal.”
Once again Don Quixote thanked the duchess, and when they had eaten supper he withdrew to his chamber alone, not permitting anyone to come in to serve him: so fearful was he of facing situations that would move him or oblige him to lose the decorous modesty that he preserved for his lady Dulcinea, always keeping present in his imagination the virtue of Amadís, flower and model of all knights errant. He closed the door after him, and in the light of two wax candles he undressed, and as he removed his shoes—O misfortune so unworthy of such a person!—there was an eruption, not of sighs or anything else that would discredit the purity of his courtesy, but of some two dozen stitches in a stocking that now looked like latticework. The good gentleman was distraught, and he would have given an ounce of silver for just a small amount of green silk thread; I say green silk because his stockings were green.
Here Benengeli interjected this exclamation, saying:
“O poverty, poverty! I do not know why the great poet of Córdoba1 was moved to call you
Holy and unwelcome gift!
I, though a Moor, know very well, through the communication I have had with Christians, that holiness consists of charity, humility, faith, obedience, and poverty; but even so, I say that a man must be very close to God if he can be content with being poor, unless it is the kind of poverty about which one of the greatest saints2 says: ‘Possess all things as if you possessed them not,’ and this is called poverty in spirit; but you, the second poverty, the one I am speaking of: why do you wish to crush gentlemen and the wellborn more than other people? Why do you oblige them to patch3 their shoes, and have some buttons on their doublets that are of silk, and others of horsehair, and others of glass? Why must their collars, for the most part, always be crumpled and not open and smooth?”
And in this one can see that the use of starch and smooth collars is very old. And he continued:
“How wretched is the wellborn man who nurtures his honor by eating badly, behind a closed door, playing the hypocrite with the toothpick he wields when he goes out after not having eaten anything that would oblige him to clean his teeth!4 How wretched is he, I say, who is apprehensive about his honor and thinks that the patch on his shoe, the perspiration on his hat, the darn on his cape, and the hunger in his stomach can be seen from a league away!”
All this was repeated in Don