Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [520]
“I’ll see this bet,” said Sancho, “and stake it all on courtesy, and let good Tosilos pour in spite of and despite all the enchanters in the Indies.”
“Well, well,” said Don Quixote, “you are, Sancho, the greatest glutton in the world, and the most ignorant man on earth, for you cannot be persuaded that this courier is enchanted and this Tosilos a counterfeit. Stay with him, and drink your fill, and I shall go ahead slowly and wait for you until you come.”
The footman laughed, uncovered his gourd, and took his cheese and a small loaf of bread out of a saddlebag, and he and Sancho sat on the green grass and in companionable peace quickly dispatched and finished the contents of the saddlebags with so much spirit that they licked the packet of letters simply because it smelled of cheese. Tosilos said to Sancho:
“There’s no doubt that your master, Sancho my friend, must be a madman.”
“What do you mean, ‘must be’?” responded Sancho. “He doesn’t owe anybody anything;3 he pays for everything, and more, when madness is the coin. I see it clearly, and I tell him so clearly, but what good does it do? Especially now, when he’s really hopeless because he was defeated by the Knight of the White Moon.”
Tosilos begged him to tell him what had happened, but Sancho responded that it was discourteous to allow his master to wait for him, and on another day, if they were to meet, there would be time for that. And having stood after he had shaken his tunic and brushed the crumbs from his beard, he walked behind the gray, said goodbye, left Tosilos, and overtook his master, who was waiting for him in the shade of a tree.
CHAPTER LXVII
Regarding the decision Don Quixote made to become a shepherd and lead a pastoral life until the year of his promise had passed, along with other incidents that are truly pleasurable and entertaining
If many thoughts had troubled Don Quixote before his fall, many more troubled him after he was toppled. As has been said, he was in the shade of the tree, and there, like flies swarming around honey, thoughts came to him and stung him: some had to do with the disenchantment of Dulcinea and others with the life he would have to live in his forced retirement. Then Sancho arrived and praised the liberality of the footman Tosilos.
“Is it possible,” said Don Quixote, “Oh, Sancho, that you still think he is the real footman? It seems you have forgotten that you saw Dulcinea changed and transformed into a peasant, and the Knight of the Mirrors into Bachelor Carrasco, the work, in both cases, of the enchanters who pursue me. But tell me now: did you ask the man you call Tosilos what God has done with Altisidora? Did she weep over my absence, or has she already placed in the hands of oblivion the amorous thoughts that so troubled her in my presence?”
“Mine were not the kind,” responded Sancho, “that would let me ask about nonsense. By God, Señor, is your grace interested now in asking about other people’s thoughts, especially amorous ones?”
“Look, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “there is a great difference between the actions one takes because of love and those taken because of gratitude. A knight may well be unenamored, but strictly speaking, he can never be ungrateful. Altisidora, it seems, loved me dearly; she gave me the three nightcaps, which you know about, she wept at my departure, she cursed me, she reviled me, she complained, despite all modesty, publicly; all of these were signs that she adored me, for the anger of lovers often ends in curses. I had no hopes to offer her or treasures to present to her, because all of mine I have given to Dulcinea, and the treasures of knights errant are, like those of goblins,1 apparent and false, and I can give her only the innocent memories I have of