Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [526]
When the duke and duchess mounted the stage, Don Quixote and Sancho rose and made deep obeisances, and the duke and duchess responded with a slight bow of their heads.
Then one of their officials crossed the courtyard, came up to Sancho, and placed on him a garment of black buckram decorated with flames of fire; he removed his cap and put on his head a cone-shaped hat, of the sort given to penitents to wear by the Holy Office, and he said into his ear that if he opened his mouth, they would gag him or take his life. Sancho looked at himself and saw himself in flames, but since they did not burn he did not care at all about them. He removed the hat, saw that it was decorated with devils, and put it back on, saying to himself:
“It’ll be fine if the flames don’t burn me and the devils don’t carry me off.”
Don Quixote looked at him as well, and although fear had stunned his senses he could not help laughing at Sancho’s appearance. At this point the soft, pleasant music of flutes began to be heard, coming, apparently, from beneath the catafalque, and, unconstrained by any human voice, because in that place silence imposed silence on itself, the music sounded gentle and amorous. Then suddenly, next to the pillow of what was, apparently, a corpse, there appeared a handsome youth dressed in Roman fashion, and to the sound of a harp that he played himself, in a soft, clear voice he sang these two stanzas:
Until Altisidora ’turns to life,
killed by the cruelty of Don Quixote;
until, in the enchanting court, the ladies
begin to wear cloth made of rough goat’s hair;
until my mistress dresses all her duennas
in clothes of heavy flannel and wool serge,
I shall sing of her beauty and affliction
more sweetly than that famed singer of Thrace.1
And yet I do not think that this sad duty
ends for me on the day that my life ends,
but with a cold, dead tongue, a lifeless mouth,
I shall lift my voice in sweetest song to you.
And when my soul, freed of its mortal shell,
is led across the dark infernal Styx,
it will celebrate you still, and with that song
it will halt the waters of oblivion.2
“No more,” said one of the two who seemed to be monarchs, “no more, divine singer, for it would mean continuing into infinity if you were to represent for us now the death and charms of the peerless Altisidora, who is not dead, as the ignorant world thinks, but alive on the tongues of Fame, and in the punishment that Sancho Panza, here present, must undergo in order to return her to the light she has lost; and so you, Rhadamanthus,3 who judges with me in the gloomy caverns of Dis,4 and who knows everything that has been determined by the inscrutable Fates regarding the return of this maiden to life, speak and declare it now so that the good we expect from her return to a new life is no longer delayed.”
As soon as Minos, judge and companion of Rhadamanthus, had spoken, Rhadamanthus rose to his feet and said:
“Ho, officials of this house, both high and low, great and small, come one after the other and mark the face of Sancho with twenty-four slaps to the nose, and twelve pinches and six pinpricks on his arms and back, for the welfare of Altisidora depends on this ceremony!” Hearing this, Sancho Panza broke the silence and said:
“By God, I’m as likely to become a Moor as to let anybody mark my face or slap my nose! By my faith! What does slapping my face have to do with the resurrection of this maiden? The old woman liked the greens so much…5 They enchant Dulcinea, and whip me to disenchant her; Altisidora dies of ills that God sent her, and they’ll bring her back by slapping me twenty-four times and riddling my body with pinpricks, and pinching my arms black and blue! Try those tricks on your brother-in-law! I’m an old dog, and you don’t have to call me twice!”
“You will die!