Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [538]
The hunters rode up, asked for their hare, and Don Quixote gave it to them; he and Sancho went on, and at the entrance to the village they encountered the priest and Bachelor Carrasco praying in a small meadow. And it should be noted here that Sancho Panza had draped the buckram tunic painted with flames, which they had placed on him in the duke’s castle on the night Altisidora was resuscitated, over the bundle of armor on the gray to serve as his repostero.3 He had also set the cone-shaped hat on the gray’s head, which was the oddest transformation and adornment ever seen on any donkey in the world.
The priest and the bachelor recognized them immediately and came toward them with open arms. Don Quixote dismounted and embraced them warmly, and some boys, who are as sharp-eyed as lynxes, caught sight of the donkey’s hat and hurried over to see it, saying to one another:
“Come on, boys, and you’ll see Sancho Panza’s donkey all dressed up and Don Quixote’s animal skinnier today than he ever was.”
In short, surrounded by boys and accompanied by the priest and the bachelor, they entered the village and went to Don Quixote’s house, and at the door they saw his housekeeper and his niece, who had already heard the news of their return. Teresa Panza, Sancho’s wife, had heard exactly the same news, and disheveled and half-dressed and pulling her daughter, Sanchica, along by the hand, she hurried to see her husband, and when she saw him not as elegantly dressed as she thought a governor should be, she said:
“Husband, why are you traveling like this, on foot and footsore and, it seems to me, looking more like a misgoverned fool than like a governor?”
“Be quiet, Teresa,” responded Sancho, “because often you can have hooks and no bacon;4 let’s go home, and there you will hear wonderful things. I have money, which is what matters, that I earned by my own labor, and with no harm to anybody.”
“Bring the money, my good husband,” said Teresa, “no matter if you earned it here or there; no matter how you did it, you won’t have thought up any new ways of earning it.”
Sanchica embraced her father and asked if he had brought her anything, for she had been waiting for him like the showers of May, and she held him on one side by his belt; and with his wife holding his hand and his daughter leading the gray, they went to their house, leaving Don Quixote in his, in the hands of his niece and his housekeeper, and in the company of the priest and the bachelor.
Don Quixote, at that very moment, without regard for the time or the hour, withdrew with the bachelor and the priest, and when they were alone he told them briefly about his defeat and the obligation he was under not to leave his village for a year, which he intended to obey to the letter and not violate in the slightest, as befitted a knight errant bound by the order and demands of knight errantry, and that he had thought of becoming a shepherd for the year and spending his time in the solitude of the countryside, where he could freely express his amorous thoughts and devote himself to the virtuous pastoral occupation; and he implored them, if they did not have too much to do and were not prevented by more important matters, to be his companions, and he would buy enough sheep and livestock to give them the name of shepherds; and he told them that the most important part of the business had already been taken care of, because he had given them names that would fit them like a glove. The priest asked him to say what they were. Don Quixote responded that he would be called Shepherd Quixotiz, and the bachelor would be Shepherd Carrascón, and the priest, Shepherd Curambro, and Sancho Panza, Shepherd Pancino.
They were stunned by Don Quixote’s new madness, but in order to keep him from leaving the village again on chivalric exploits, and hoping he might be cured