• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 696 0

all he could do was draw his sword; it was his good fortune, however, to be next to the carriage, and he seized one of the pillows and used it as a shield, and the two of them went at each other as if they were mortal enemies. The rest of the people tried to make peace between them but could not, because the Basque said in his tangled words that if they did not allow him to finish his fight, he himself would kill his mistress and everyone else who got in his way. The lady in the carriage, stunned and fearful at what she saw, had the coachman drive some distance away, and from there she watched the fierce contest, in the course of which the Basque went over Don Quixote’s shield and struck a great blow with his sword to his shoulder, and if it had not been protected by armor, he would have opened it to the waist. Don Quixote, who felt the pain of that enormous blow, gave a great shout, saying:

“O lady of my soul, Dulcinea, flower of beauty, come to the aid of this thy knight, who, for the sake of thy great virtue, finds himself in grave peril!”

Saying this, and grasping his sword, and protecting himself with his shield, and attacking the Basque were all one, for he was determined to venture everything on the fortune of a single blow.

The Basque, seeing him attack in this fashion, clearly understood the courage in this rash act and resolved to do the same as Don Quixote. And so he waited for him, shielded by his pillow, and unable to turn the mule one way or the other, for the mule, utterly exhausted and not made for such foolishness, could not take another step.

As has been said, Don Quixote was charging the wary Basque with his sword on high, determined to cut him in half, and the Basque, well-protected by his pillow, was waiting for him, his sword also raised, and all the onlookers were filled with fear and suspense regarding the outcome of the great blows they threatened to give to each other, and the lady in the carriage and all her maids were making a thousand vows and offerings to all the images and houses of devotion in Spain so that God would deliver the squire and themselves from the great danger in which they found themselves.

But the difficulty in all this is that at this very point and juncture, the author of the history leaves the battle pending, apologizing because he found nothing else written about the feats of Don Quixote other than what he has already recounted. It is certainly true that the second author5 of this work did not want to believe that so curious a history would be subjected to the laws of oblivion, or that the great minds of La Mancha possessed so little interest that they did not have in their archives or writing tables a few pages that dealt with this famous knight; and so, with this thought in mind, he did not despair of finding the conclusion to this gentle history, which, with heaven’s help, he discovered in the manner that will be revealed in part two.6

Part Two of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha

CHAPTER IX

In which the stupendous battle between the gallant Basque and the valiant Manchegan is concluded and comes to an end

In part one of this history, we left the brave Basque and the famous Don Quixote with their swords raised and unsheathed, about to deliver two downstrokes so furious that if they had entirely hit the mark, the combatants would have been cut and split in half from top to bottom and opened like pomegranates; and at that extremely uncertain point, the delectable history stopped and was interrupted, without the author giving us any information as to where the missing parts could be found.

This caused me a good deal of grief, because the pleasure of having read so small an amount was turning into displeasure at the thought of the difficult road that lay ahead in finding the large amount that, in my opinion, was missing from so charming a tale. It seemed impossible and completely contrary to all good precedent that so good a knight should have lacked a wise man who would assume the responsibility of recording his never-before-seen deeds, something