Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [542]
Item: I bequeath my entire estate to Antonia Quixana, my niece, who is present, having first taken out, in the most convenient way, what is necessary to fulfill the other bequests I have made; and the first that I want to make is to pay the salary owed to my housekeeper for the time she has served me, plus another twenty ducados for a dress. As executors I appoint the priest and Bachelor Sansón Carrasco, who are both present.
Item: it is my will that if Antonia Quixana, my niece, wishes to marry, she marry a man regarding whom it has first been determined that he does not know anything about books of chivalry; and in the event it is discovered that he does know about them, and despite this my niece still wishes to marry him, she must lose all that I have left her, which can then be distributed by my executors in pious works, as they see fit.
Item: I implore the aforementioned executors that if they are fortunate enough to meet the author who, they say, composed a history entitled The Second Part of the Exploits of Don Quixote of La Mancha, that they ask him for me, as courteously as possible, to forgive the occasion I unwittingly gave him for writing so many and such great absurdities as he wrote therein, because I depart this life with qualms that I have been the reason he wrote them.”
With this he brought his will to a close, and falling into a swoon, he collapsed on his bed. Everyone was alarmed and hurried to assist him, and in the three days he lived after making his will, he fainted very often. The house was in an uproar, but even so the niece ate, the housekeeper drank, and Sancho Panza was content, for the fact of inheriting something wipes away or tempers in the heir the memory of the grief that is reasonably felt for the deceased.
In brief, Don Quixote’s end came after he had received all the sacraments and had execrated books of chivalry with many effective words. The scribe happened to be present, and he said he had never read in any book of chivalry of a knight errant dying in his bed in so tranquil and Christian a manner as Don Quixote, who, surrounded by the sympathy and tears of those present, gave up the ghost, I mean to say, he died.
When he saw this, the priest asked the scribe to draw up a document to the effect that Alonso Quixano the Good, commonly called Don Quixote of La Mancha, had passed from this life and had died a natural death; he said he was requesting this document in order to remove the possibility that any author other than Cide Hamete Benengeli would falsely resurrect him and write endless histories of his deeds.
This was the end of the Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha, whose village Cide Hamete did not wish to name precisely, so that all the towns and villages of La Mancha might contend among themselves to claim him as their own, as the seven cities in Greece contended to claim Homer.
The tears of Sancho and of Don Quixote’s niece and housekeeper, new epitaphs for his grave, are not recorded here, although Sansón Carrasco did write this one for him:
Here lies the mighty Gentleman
who rose to such heights of valor
that death itself did not triumph
over his life with his death.
He did not esteem the world;
he was the frightening threat
to the world, in this respect,
for it was his great good fortune
to live a madman, and die sane.
And a most prudent Cide Hamete said to his pen:
“Here you will remain, hanging from this rack on a copper wire, and I do not know if you, my quill pen, are well or badly cut, but there you will live, down through the ages, unless presumptuous and unscrupulous historians take you down to profane you. But before they reach you, you can warn them and tell them as well as you are able:
Careful, careful, worthless idlers!
Let no one lay a hand on