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“Yes, I know you,” was the response. “You are Don Pedro Noriz.”

“I don’t want to know more, for this is enough for me to realize, O head, that you know everything.”

When he moved away, the other friend approached and asked:

“Tell me, head, what does my son and heir desire?”

“I have already said,” came the response, “that I do not consider desires, but despite this, I can tell you that what your son desires is to bury you.”

“That’s right,” said the gentleman. “What I see with my eyes I can touch with my finger.”

And he asked nothing more. Don Antonio’s wife came up and said:

“Head, I don’t know what to ask you; I only wanted to know if I’ll enjoy many more years with my good husband.”

And the response was:

“You will, because his health and temperate living promise many years of life, which many people tend to cut short by their intemperance.”

Then Don Quixote approached and said:

“Tell me, you who respond: was my account of what happened to me in the Cave of Montesinos the truth or a dream? Will the lashes of my squire Sancho be completed? Will the disenchantment of Dulcinea take place?”

“As for the cave,” was the response, “there is much to say, for it has something of both: Sancho’s lashes will go slowly, and the disenchantment of Dulcinea will be duly effected.”

“I do not wish to know more,” said Don Quixote, “for when I see Dulcinea disenchanted, I shall think that all the good fortune I could wish for has come all at once.”

The final questioner was Sancho, and what he asked was:

“By any chance, head, will I have another governorship? Will I ever escape a squire’s poverty? Will I see my wife and children again?”

The response was:

“You will govern in your house, and if you return there, you will see your wife and children, and when you stop serving, you will stop being a squire.”

“By God, that’s good!” said Sancho Panza. “I could have told myself that: the prophet Old Chestnut couldn’t have said more.”

“Animal,” said Don Quixote, “what response do you want? Is it not enough that this head has given answers that correspond to what is asked of it?”

“Yes, it’s enough,” responded Sancho, “but I’d like it to declare more and tell me more.”

With this the questions and answers came to an end, but not the amazement felt by everyone except the two friends of Don Antonio, who were privy to the secret. Cide Hamete Benengeli wished to explain the matter immediately in order to curb the astonishment of those who might think that some magical and extraordinary mystery was contained in the head, and so he tells us that Don Antonio Moreno, in imitation of another head he had seen in Madrid, which had been fabricated by an engraver, had this one made in his own house for his own entertainment and to astound the ignorant; it was constructed in this fashion: the tabletop was of wood painted and varnished to look like jasper, and the base on which it rested was made of the same material, with four eagle’s talons projecting from it for greater stability. The head, which resembled a carved portrait bust of a Roman emperor cast in bronze, was completely hollow, as was the tabletop into which it fit so perfectly that there was no sign of their joining. The base of the table was also hollow, corresponding to the throat and chest of the head, and all this connected to another chamber beneath the room where the head was located. Through the entire hollow of the base, tabletop, throat, and chest of the portrait bust ran a tube of tinplate that was very precisely fitted and could not be seen by anyone. Posted in the corresponding chamber below was the man who would respond, his mouth up against the tube, so that, as if the tube were an ear trumpet, one voice would travel down and the other would travel up in clear, well-articulated words, and in this way it was not possible to discover the deception. Don Antonio’s nephew, an astute and clever student, was the responder; having been told by his uncle who would come into the room with him to question the head that day, it was easy for him to respond quickly and