Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [72]
Well then, after the muledriver had seen to his train of mules and given them their second ration of feed, he lay down on the packsaddles to wait for the punctual Maritornes. Sancho was already poulticed and in his bed, and although he tried to sleep, the pain in his ribs would not allow it, and Don Quixote’s ribs hurt so much that his eyes were as wide open as a hare’s. The entire inn was quiet, and the only light came from a lamp hanging in the middle of the main entrance.
This wondrous silence, and the thoughts of our knight, which always were turned to the events constantly recounted in the books responsible for his misfortune, brought to his mind as strange a bit of madness as anyone could imagine, and it was that he thought he had come to a famous castle—for, as has been said, it seemed to him that all the inns where he stayed were castles—and that the innkeeper’s daughter was the daughter of the lord of the castle, and that she, conquered by his gentle bearing, had fallen in love with him and had promised to steal away from her parents that night and come and lie with him for a time; and since he considered this entire fantasy, which he had invented, as solid and true, he became distressed as he began to think of the dangerous predicament in which his virtue would find itself, and he resolved in his heart not to betray his lady Dulcinea of Toboso even if Queen Guinevere herself, along with her duenna Quintañona, were to appear before him.
As he was thinking about this foolishness, the time and hour arrived—and for Don Quixote it was an unfortunate one—when the Asturian was to come in, and wearing her chemise, with bare feet and her hair tied back in a cotton snood, with silent, cautious steps she entered the room where the three men were lying, looking for the muledriver. But as soon as she walked through the door, Don Quixote heard her, and sitting up in his bed, despite the poultices and the pain in his ribs, he extended his arms to welcome his fair damsel. The Asturian, who, tentatively and quietly, was holding her hands out in front of her and looking for her beloved, collided with Don Quixote’s arms; he seized her by the wrist and, pulling her to him, while she did not dare to say a word, forced her to sit on the bed. Then he touched her chemise, and though it was made of burlap, to him it seemed the finest and sheerest silk. On her wrists she wore glass beads, but he imagined them to be precious pearls of the Orient. Her tresses, which were rather like a horse’s mane, he deemed strands of shining Arabian gold whose brilliance made the sun seem dim. And her breath, which undoubtedly smelled of yesterday’s stale salad, seemed to him a soft, aromatic scent wafting from her mouth; in short, he depicted her in his imagination as having the form and appearance of another princess he had read about in his books who, overcome by love and endowed with all the charms stated here, came to see the badly wounded knight. And the blind illusions of the poor gentleman were so great that neither her touch, nor her breath, nor any other of the good maiden’s attributes could discourage him, though they were enough to make any man who was not a muledriver vomit; on the contrary, it seemed to him that he clasped in his arms the goddess of beauty. And holding her close, in a low, amorous voice he began to say:
“Would that I were able, O beauteous and exalted lady, to repay the great boon thou hast granted me with the sight of thy sublime beauty, but Fortune, which never wearies of pursuing the virtuous,