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4. Sancho confuses the proverb, which ends: “…you can’t complain about the evil that happens to you.”

1 Written by Bernardo de Vargas, the book was published in 1545.

2 This novel was mentioned in the examination of Don Quixote’s library by the priest and the barber.

3 Published in 1580, this chronicle recounts the exploits of one of the most famous and successful officers to serve under the Catholic Sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella. Gonzalo Hernández de Córdoba (1453–1515) was called the Great Captain; his aide, Diego García de Paredes, was renowned for his enormous strength.

1 This is the first of what are called the interpolated novels (in contemporary terms, they are novellas) in the first part of Don Quixote; the story is derived from an episode in Canto 43 of Ariosto’s Orlando furioso. There are indications in the second part of Don Quixote that Cervantes was criticized for these “interruptions” of the action.

2 Plutarch attributes the phrase to Pericles.

3 An Italian poet of the sixteenth century (1510–1568).

4 An allusion to the story, recounted in Orlando furioso, of a magic goblet that indicated if the women who drank from it were faithful.

5 Danae was confined in a tower by her father, King Acrisius, when an oracle stated that her son would kill him. Zeus transformed himself into a shower of gold, visited her, and fathered Perseus.

2 The four Ss that a lover needed to be were sabio (“wise”), solo (“alone”), solícito (“solicitous”), and secreto (“secretive”). This conceit was popular during the Renaissance, as were the ABCs of love cited by many authors. The W is omitted from Leonela’s ABC because it is not part of the Spanish alphabet.

1 The phrase in Spanish, ciertos son los toros, is equivalent to “the bulls are certain”—that is, “there’s no doubt about the outcome.”

2 A cuartillo is one-fourth of a real.

3 A cuarto, a coin of very little value, was worth four maravedís.

4 This appears to refer to the battle of Cerignola, in 1503, when the defeat of the French made the kingdom of Naples a Spanish province.

1 In what seems to be another oversight on the part of Cervantes or his printer, the first part of this epigraph actually belongs to the previous chapter.

2 These were worn to protect travelers from the sun and dust.

3 It was believed that nobility was inherited exclusively from the father.

4 Another apparent oversight: it was indicated earlier in the chapter that the two men had already seen each other.

1 An extremely variable liquid measure, ranging from 2.6 to 3.6 gallons (it is also a dry measure equivalent to twenty-five pounds).

3 It seems likely that the earlier description of the character as a “Christian recently arrived from Moorish lands” means that he could only be a former prisoner, although the story of his captivity—another interpolated novel—does not begin until chapter XXXIX.

4 The word means Señora, or “Lady.”

5 The debate between arms and letters (that is, the life of a soldier compared to the life of a cleric or scholar), a frequent literary topic in Europe during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, was at least as popular as the theme of the Golden Age, the subject of Don Quixote’s discourse when he shared a meal with the goatherds.

6 A phrase that means going to convents and monasteries for the soup that is distributed to the poor.

1 This is the second of the “interpolated novels.” Cervantes himself had been a captive for some five years, and many of the elements in the story may be autobiographical, but it should also be noted, as Martín de Riquer points out, that it was a fairly common practice to insert a romantic tale with Moorish themes into works that otherwise seemed to have little to do with either romance or the Moors.

2 An amount worth approximately thirty-three thousand reales.

3 A fortified town on the Tenaro River, near Milan.

4 The duke of Alba reached Brussels on August 22, 1567.

5 Belgian noblemen who fought against the French in