Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [57]
“I shall be certain to,” said Don Quixote, “and I thank you for the pleasure you have given me with the narration of so delightful a story.”
“Oh!” replied the goatherd. “I still don’t know the half of what’s happened to the lovers of Marcela, but it may be that tomorrow we’ll meet some shepherd on the way who’ll tell us about them. For now, it would be a good idea if you slept under a roof, because the night air might hurt your wound, though the medicine you’ve put on it is so good there’s no reason to fear any trouble.”
Sancho Panza, who by this time was cursing the goatherd’s endless talk, also asked his master to go into Pedro’s hut to sleep. He did so, and spent the rest of the night thinking of his lady Dulcinea, in imitation of Marcela’s lovers. Sancho Panza settled down between Rocinante and his donkey and slept, not like a scorned lover, but like a man who had been kicked and bruised.
CHAPTER XIII
In which the tale of the shepherdess Marcela is concluded, and other events are related
But no sooner had day begun to appear on the balconies of the east than five of the six goatherds got up and went to wake Don Quixote and tell him that if he was still of a mind to go to see the famous burial of Grisóstomo, they would accompany him. Don Quixote, who desired nothing else, got up and ordered Sancho to saddle and prepare the mounts immediately, which he did very promptly, and just as promptly they all set out. And they had gone less than a quarter of a league when, at an intersection with another path, they saw coming toward them approximately six shepherds, dressed in black sheepskin jackets, their heads crowned with wreaths of cypress and bitter oleander. Each carried a heavy staff of holly in his hand. With them rode two gentlemen on horseback, very well equipped for traveling and accompanied by three servants on foot. As the two groups drew close they exchanged courteous greetings, asked where the other was going, discovered they were all heading for the burial site, and so began to travel together.
One of the men on horseback, speaking to his companion, said:
“It seems to me, Señor Vivaldo, that we must consider our lingering to see this extraordinary funeral as time well spent, for it most certainly will be extraordinary, according to the strange tales these shepherds have told us not only about the dead shepherd, but about the murderous shepherdess.”
“I think so, too,” responded Vivaldo. “And I would have been willing to linger not merely one day but four in order to see it.”
Don Quixote asked what they had heard about Marcela and Grisóstomo. The traveler replied that early that morning they had encountered the shepherds and, seeing them in such mournful dress, had asked the reason for their going about in that manner, and one of them had recounted the strange behavior and beauty of a shepherdess named Marcela, and the love so many suitors had for her, and the death of Grisóstomo, to whose burial they were going. In short, he related everything that Pedro had told Don Quixote.
This conversation ended and another began when the traveler called Vivaldo asked Don Quixote the reason for his going about armed in that manner when the land was so peaceful. To which Don Quixote replied:
“The exercise of my profession does not allow or permit me to go about in any other manner. Tranquility, luxury, and repose were invented for pampered courtiers, but travail, tribulation, and arms were invented and created only for those whom the world calls knights errant, and I, although unworthy, am the least of that number.”
As soon as they heard this, they considered him mad, and to learn more and see what sort of madness this