Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [485]
Sancho once again was so amazed at what his master knew, it was as if he had never known him, for it seemed there was no history or event in the world that Don Quixote did not have clearly in mind and fixed in his memory; and Sancho said:
“The truth is, Señor Master, that if what happened to us today can be called an adventure, it has been one of the gentlest and sweetest that has happened to us in the course of our wanderings: we’ve come out of it with no beatings and no fear, and we haven’t laid a hand on our swords, or battered the ground with our bodies, or been left hungry. God be praised for allowing me to see such a thing with my own eyes.”
“What you say is correct, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “but you must realize that not all times are the same, nor do they always follow the same course, and what common people generally call omens, which are not founded on any natural cause, the wise man must consider and judge to be happy events. One of these superstitious men gets up in the morning, leaves his house, happens to meet a friar of the Order of the Blessed St. Francis, and as if he had met a gryphon,3 he turns around and returns home. Another Mendoza4 spills salt on the table, and melancholy spills in his heart, as if nature were obliged to give signs of impending misfortunes with things as trivial as those we have mentioned. A wise Christian should not try to guess what heaven intends to do. When Scipio arrived in Africa, he stumbled as he leaped ashore, and his soldiers considered it an evil omen, but he embraced the ground and said: ‘You cannot escape me, Africa, because I am holding you tight in my arms.’ And so, Sancho, having come across these images has been a very happy event for me.”
“I believe that, too,” responded Sancho, “and I’d like your grace to tell me why it is that Spaniards, when they’re about to go into battle, invoke that St. James the Moorkiller and say: ‘St. James, and close Spain!’ By some chance is Spain open so that it’s necessary to close her, or what ceremony is that?”5
“You are very simple, Sancho,” responded Don Quixote. “Remember that God gave this great Knight of the Scarlet Cross to Spain to be her patron and protector, especially in the harsh conflicts that the Spaniards have had with the Moors, and so they invoke and call on him as their defender in every battle they fight, and they often have seen him throwing down, trampling, destroying, and killing the squadrons of Hagar,6 and I could give you many examples of this truth that are recounted in truthful Spanish histories.”
Sancho changed the subject and said to his master:
“I’m amazed, Señor, at the boldness of Altisidora, the duchess’s maiden: she must have been badly wounded and run through by the one they call Amor; they say he’s a little blind boy, and his vision is dim, or, I should say, he’s sightless, but if he takes aim at a heart, no matter how small, he hits it with his arrows and runs it through. I’ve also heard that a maiden’s modesty and reserve can make those amorous arrows blunt and dull, but in Altisidora they seem to grow sharper, not duller.”
“You should know, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “that love shows no restraint, and does not keep within the bounds of reason as it proceeds, and has the same character as death: it attacks the noble palaces of kings as well as the poor huts of shepherds, and when it takes full possession of a heart, the first thing it does is to take away fear and shame; lacking them, Altisidora declared her desires, which gave rise in my bosom to more confusion than compassion.”
“What notable cruelty!” said Sancho. “What glaring ingratitude! For me, I can say that at her smallest word of love I’d surrender and submit. Whoreson, what a heart of marble you have, and a will of bronze, and a soul of mortar! But I can’t think what this maiden saw in your grace that made her surrender and submit like that: what grace, what elegance,