About what happened to the famous don Quixote in the Sierra Morena, which was one of the strangest adventures in this true history.
D ON QUIXOTE, seeing himself in such bad shape, said to his squire: “I’ve always heard tell, Sancho, that doing something nice for boors is like throwing water into the sea. If I’d believed what you told me, I would have avoided all this grief. But it’s over and done with—patience, and let’s learn something from this.”
“If your grace learns anything,” responded Sancho, “then I’ll become a Turk,” responded Sancho. “But since you say that if you had believed me you would have avoided all this, believe me now, and you’ll avoid further and greater trouble, because I’ll tell you that the Holy Brotherhood has no use for chivalry, and wouldn’t give two maravedís for all the knights errant in the world; and it seems to me that their arrows are already buzzing past my ears.”
“By nature you’re a coward, Sancho,” said don Quixote, “but so you won’t say that I’m obstinate and that I never do what you advise me to do, this time I’ll heed your warning and retreat from the fury you fear so much. But it has to be on one condition: that you’ll never tell anyone, in life or in death, that I withdrew from this peril because of fear, but rather only to go along with your wishes; and if you say anything else, you’ll be lying, from now until then, and from then until now, and I’ll deny it, and will say that you’re lying, and will lie every time you think or say it. And don’t dispute any of this, because just by thinking that I retreat from danger, especially from this one that carries with it the suspicion of the shadow of fear, I’m about to say I’ll stay here and await, not only the Holy Brotherhood you mentioned, but also the brothers of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, the Seven Maccabees, Castor and Pollux, and all the brothers and brotherhoods that there are in the world.”
“Señor, responded Sancho, “withdrawing is not fleeing, nor is waiting around considered prudent when there’s more danger than hope. Wise men save themselves for tomorrow, and don’t risk everything in one day. And although I’m ignorant and a rustic, I still know something about what they call common sense. So, don’t change your mind about taking my advice; get up onto Rocinante if you can, and if not, I’ll help you—and follow me, for my head tells me now we need to use our feet more than our hands.”
Don Quixote mounted his horse without saying another word, and with Sancho leading him on his donkey, they entered the Sierra Morena. It was Sancho’s intention to go all the way across it and come out in El Vigo or in Almodóvar del Campo, and hide for a few days in that rugged territory, so they would not be found if the Holy Brotherhood was looking for them. He was encouraged when he saw the provisions on his donkey had escaped detection in the fray with the galley slaves, which he considered miraculous considering everything the galley slaves had taken.
As soon as Don Quixote went into the mountains, his heart gladdened, for it seemed to him that the place was ideal for the adventures he was seeking. In his memory, there swirled about marvelous things that had happened to knights errant in similar secluded, rugged places. As he went along thinking about these things, he was so engrossed and transported by them, that he paid no attention to anything else; nor did Sancho, sitting side-saddle on his donkey, following his master, have any worries, except that of satisfying his hunger with the leftovers from the clerical spoils, taking tidbits from the bag and stowing them in his stomach; and while he was traveling that way, he wouldn’t have given an ardite to stumble across another adventure.
At this point he raised his eyes and saw that his master had stopped, trying to lift I don’t know what kind of object lying on the ground. He hurried over to help him, as he should. And he got there just when his master was attempting to lift a saddle cushion and a valise attached to it, half rotted—or completely rotted—and falling apart. But they weighed enough so that
Sancho had to dismount to pick them up, and his master told him to see what was in the valise.
Sancho did this very quickly, and although the valise was fastened with a chain and a padlock, he could see what there was inside through the torn and rotted sections: four shirts of fine linen and some other items of linen no less neat than clean, and in a handkerchief, he found a heap of gold escudos, and as soon as he saw them he said: “Praise be to heaven, for it has given us a profitable adventure!”
And looking further, he found a diary that was richly decorated. Don Quixote asked for it, and told Sancho to take the money and keep it for himself. He kissed don Quixote’s hands for the favor. He took out all the linen clothes and put them in the saddlebag.
All this was seen by don Quixote, who said: “It seems to me, Sancho— and it’s impossible that it can be anything else—that some traveler got lost and came through these hills, and some brigands robbed and killed him, and brought him here in this hidden place to bury him.”
“That can’t be,” responded Sancho, “because if they were thieves, they wouldn’t have left this money here.”
“You’re right,” said don Quixote, “and so I can’t tell or figure out what it’s all about. But wait a moment, we’ll see if there is something written in this diary that will help us find out and come to know what we want.”
He opened it and the first thing in it was a draft of a sonnet, written in a very find hand, and reading it aloud so that Sancho could hear it as well, he saw that it read this way:
“The poem,” said Sancho, “doesn’t tell us much, and I can’t even understand what a fillip has to do with love.”
“What fillip are you talking about, Sancho?”
“It seems to me that you said something like ‘fillip’ somewhere there.”
“What I said was Fili,” responded don Quixote, “and this is doubtless the name of the lady about whom the author of this sonnet is complaining. And I swear he must be a pretty good poet, or I know little about art.”
“So,” said Sancho, “your grace knows something about poetry?”
“And more than you think,” responded don Quixote. “You’ll see when you take a letter written entirely in verse to my lady Dulcinea del Toboso, because I want you to know, Sancho, that all, or most knights errant of bygone days, were great troubadours and musicians, and that these skills, or graces—to be more accurate—are typical of errant lovers. It’s true that the poems of the past knights are more passionate than beautiful.”
“Read a bit more,” said Sancho, “since you’ll doubtless find something that will reveal more.”
Don Quixote turned the page and said: “This is prose, and appears to be a letter.”
“A personal letter?” asked Sancho.
“It seems to be more of a love letter,” responded don Quixote.
“So, read it aloud” said Sancho, “because I like things dealing with love.”
“I’d be pleased to do it,” said don Quixote.
And reading it aloud, as Sancho had asked, he saw that it went like this:
Your false promise and my certain misfortune are taking me to a place where you’ll hear of my death before you hear my words of complaint. You rejected me—oh, ungrateful one!—for a man who has more than I do, rather than who is worth more than I am. But if virtue were something that was valued, I wouldn’t envy anyone else’s happiness nor my own misfortunes. What your beauty has built, your works have torn down—through the former, I considered you to be an angel; and through the latter, I realize that you are a woman. May you remain in peace—you, who have put me at war—and may heaven fix it so your husband’s deceits stay hidden, so you won’t have to repent for what you did, nor will I have to take vengeance I don’t want to.
On finishing this letter, don Quixote said: “This tells us even less than the verses, except that the person who wrote it is a disdained lover.”
And glancing through most of the diary, he found other verses and letters—some he could read, others not. But what all of them contained was complaints, laments, jealousies, likes, dislikes, support, and scorn, some extolling, others lamenting.
While don Quixote was looking through the book, Sancho was investigating the contents of the valise and the saddle cushion without leaving a corner, unsearched, uninspected, or uninvestigated, nor was there any seam he didn’t undo, nor tuft of wool he didn’t comb out, so he wouldn’t miss anything through lack of diligence or carelessness, such was the greed that finding the escudos—and there were more than a hundred of them—awakened in him. And even though he found no more than he’d already had, he admitted that the flight in the blanket, the vomiting caused by the balm, the blessings from the stakes, the punches by the muleteer, and the loss of the saddlebags, the robbery of the coat, and all the hunger, thirst, and exhaustion he’d suffered in the service of his good master, seemed to him to be well worth it, owing to the favor he got by being able to keep the treasure.
The Woebegone Knight greatly desired to know who the owner of the valise was, imagining—because of the sonnet and the letter, the money in gold, and the fine shirts—that he must be some upper class lover whom disdain and bad treatment by his lady had made him decide to kill himself. But since no one appeared in that uninhabitable and craggy place who could tell him what he wanted to know, he thought only of going on, taking the road that Rocinante chose (which was where he could find the surest footing), always considering that he couldn’t fail to find a strange adventure in that wilderness.
As he rode along with this thought in mind, he saw on the top of a hill directly in front of him, a man jumping from crag to crag and from shrub to shrub, with uncommon agility. It seemed to him that this fellow was scantily clothed and his beard was thick and black, with long, matted hair. His feet were bare and he had nothing on his legs below the knee. His thighs were covered by pants, apparently of tan velvet, but so ragged that his flesh showed through here and there. He had no hat, and was as nimble as has already been related. The Woebegone Knight saw and noted all these details. Although he tried to, he couldn’t follow him since it wasn’t possible for Rocinante to travel through those rugged places, especially since he was by nature slow-footed and sluggish. At that instant don Quixote figured that fellow must be the owner of the saddle cushion and valise, and he resolved to look for him, even though he might have to wander about in those mountains for a year until he found him. So he told Sancho to get off his donkey and cut across the hill in one direction, and he would go in another, and it might be that by using this strategem they’d run across that man who so quickly had disappeared.
“I can’t do that,” responded Sancho, “because when I’m separated from your grace, I’m assailed by fright, and attacked by a thousand kinds of anxie-ties and apprehensions. And let this serve notice to you, because from now on I won’t stray an inch from your presence.”
“That’s fine,” said the Woebegone One, “and I’m very happy you want to rely on my courage, which will never fail you, even though your own soul deserts you. So, follow me, step by step, as well as you can, and turn your eyes into beacons, and we’ll circle this little hill and maybe we’ll find that man we saw who, without any doubt, is none other than the owner of what we found.”
To which Sancho responded: “It would be a lot better not to look for him, because if we find him, and he turns out to be the owner of the money, it’s very clear we’ll have to give it back; so it would be appropriate, without using this useless artifice, to keep it in good faith, until by some other less meddlesome and diligent way we run across its true owner, and maybe it’ll be after I’ve spent it all, and then the king will hold me blameless.”
“You’re wrong there, Sancho,” responded don Quixote, “for now that we suspect who the owner is—and we’re pretty sure it’s the fellow who is practically in front of us—we’re duty-bound to look for him and return it. And if we don’t look for him, the keen suspicion we have that he’s truly the person we’re looking for, makes us as guilty as if he were. So, Sancho, my friend, let our search for him give you no distress; rather, weigh it against the distress that will be taken from me if I do find him.”
So he spurred Rocinante, and Sancho followed him on his donkey. And when they had gone around the hill, they found a dead mule that was saddled and bridled at the bank of a stream, half eaten by dogs, and pecked by crows. All this confirmed their suspicion that the man who was fleeing was the owner of the mule and the saddle cushion. While they were looking at the scene, they heard a whistle like the ones shepherds use. And suddenly, on their left, there appeared a large number of goats, and behind them, on the top of a little hill, the one who kept them came into view—an old man. Don Quixote shouted to him and begged him to come down. He called back, asking who had brought them to that place so rarely trod upon except by the feet of goats or wolves, or other wild animals that inhabited that area. Sancho responded that he should come down and they would explain everything he wanted to know.
The goatherd came down to where don Quixote was, and said to him: “I’ll bet you’re looking at that dead pack-mule that lies in that ravine, and by my faith, he’s been lying there for six months. Tell me, have you found its owner?”
“We haven’t run across anything,” responded don Quixote, “except we did find a saddle cushion and a little traveling bag not far from here.”
“I found them as well,” responded the goatherd, “but I never picked them up or even went near them, fearing some mishap, and someone would claim I stole them, because the devil is sly, and something pops up that you stumble and fall on without knowing how.”
“That’s exactly what I say,” responded Sancho. “I also found them and I wouldn’t go within a stone’s throw of them. I left them there, and there it sits just like it was, since I don’t want any trouble either.” “Tell me, my good man,” said don Quixote, “do you know who the owner of these things might be?”
“What I can tell you,” said the goatherd, “is that about six months ago, a little more or less, a well-groomed and handsome young man came to a shepherds’ hut about three leagues from where we are, riding on that mule now dead over there, and with the same saddle cushion and suitcase you say you found but didn’t touch. He asked us where the harshest and most hidden place in these mountains was. We told him it was this place where we are right now; and it’s the truth, because if you go in a half league further you may never get out. I’m surprised you could have gotten this far since there is no road or path that leads here.
“So, as I was saying, when he heard our response, he turned and rode to where we told him, leaving everybody charmed with his good looks, astonished at what he planned to do, and the speed with which we saw him dash into the mountains. And after that we didn’t see him for a few days, when he came out into the road and went up to one of our goatherds, and without saying a word, began punching and kicking him, then he went over to the donkey with provisions, and took all the bread and cheese it was carrying. After he did what I said, he went back among the trees very nimbly to hide in the mountains. Since a few of us goatherds knew about him, we went looking for him in the densest part of the mountains for two days, at the end of which we found him reclining in the hollow part of a robust cork tree. He came out to greet us very meekly, his clothing all tattered and his face so disfigured and sunburned that we hardly recognized him. But his clothing, although it was in shreds, from the way we remembered it, proved to us that he was the one we were looking for.
“He greeted us courteously, and in a few well chosen words he told us not to marvel at seeing him going about like that because he had to so that he could complete a certain penance imposed on him for his many sins. We begged him to tell us who he was, but we could never find out what his name was. We also told him that when he needed food—without which he couldn’t stay alive—he should tell us where to find him, because we would take him some out of charity and caring. And if this wasn’t to his liking either, the least he could do is ask for it and not snatch it away from the goatherds. He thanked us for our offer and begged our pardon for his past attacks, and said he would ask for food from then on in God’s name, without assailing anybody. As to where he lived, he said that he had no place in particular except where night overtook him, and he ended his discourse with such a sad lament that we’d have to have been made of stone not to join him in his tears, especially considering what he had looked like when we’d first seen him, compared with the way he looked then. Because, as I’ve said, he was a very gentle young man, and in his courteous and well chosen words he showed himself to be well-born and a very courtly person who, although we who were listening to him were rustics, his refinement was such that even we could recognize it very clearly.
“And when he got to the best part of his speech, he stopped and went silent, and began staring at the ground for a long time, during which time we were quiet and in suspense, waiting anxiously to see how that spell would turn out. It was a pitiful sight to see him that way, for he’d been staring at the ground for a long time, eyes wide open without moving an eyelash, and other times closing his eyes tightly, squeezing his lips together and arching his eyebrows, and it seemed to us that a sudden fit of madness had overtaken him. And he proved very soon that what we suspected was correct, because he jumped up from the ground where he lay and attacked the first person he found nearby with such fierceness and rage that if we hadn’t pulled them apart, he would have killed him with his punches and bites, and saying all the while: ‘Ah, Fernando, you traitor! Now, now you’ll pay for the outrage you did to me! These hands will pluck out your heart, where all wickedness—particularly fraud and deceit—reside and have their abode.’ And to these he added other words, all of them to defame that fellow Fernando, and to charge him with treachery.
“We separated them with no little trouble, and he—without saying another word—retreated into the forest, running through these brambles and other underbrush, making it impossible to follow him. Through all this, we figured that these fits of madness came only from time to time, and that someone named Fernando must have played a dirty trick on him so offensive that it had led him to the state he was in. All of this was confirmed since then, because on many occasions he would come out onto the road, sometimes to ask the goatherds for something to eat, and other times to take it by force during a fit of madness—and even though the goatherds offer him food willingly, he won’t accept it, but rather beats them up and takes it away. And when he’s in his right mind, he asks for it in God’s name very courteously, and thanks us profusely, and with no lack of tears. And in truth, I tell you, señores,” continued the goatherd, “that yesterday four locals and I—two of them servants and two friends of mine—resolved to look for him until we found him. And after we find him, whether by force or with his permission, we’ll take him to the town of Almodóvar, which is eight leagues from here, and there we’ll try to cure him, if his illness has a cure, or we’ll find out who he is when he’s in his right mind, and if he has relatives who we can notify about his misfortune. This, señores, is all I can tell you of what you asked me about, and I want you to understand that the owner of the items you found is the same one that you saw racing by, as agile as he was ragged,” for don Quixote had already told him how he’d seen that man leaping about in the mountains.
Don Quixote was astonished to learn what he’d heard from the goatherd, and was more eager than ever to find out who the unfortunate crazy man was; and he decided do what he’d planned: to comb the mountainside looking for him, leaving no corner or cave unexplored until he found him. But his luck was better than he could have planned or hoped, for at that moment the young man he was looking for appeared through a narrow pass that led to where they were. He came muttering to himself, saying things they couldn’t have understood if they had been nearby, much less when he was distant. He was dressed as has been described, except that when he drew near, don Quixote saw that the ragged jacket he was wearing still smelled of perfume, by means of which he could tell that the person who wore such clothing was not of low rank.
When the young man went over to them, he greeted them with a humble and hoarse voice, but still very courteously. Don Quixote returned his greeting no less courteously, and getting off Rocinante, with gentle demeanor and grace, went over to embrace him, and he held him for a long while in his arms, as if he’d known him for a long time. The other, whom we might called the RAGGED ONE OF THE STRICKEN FACE (as don Quixote was the Woebegone One), after allowing himself to be embraced, he moved away from him a bit and put his hands on don Quixote’s shoulders, and looked at him to see if he recognized him, and was no less astonished at seeing the face, figure, and armor of don Quixote than don Quixote was at seeing him. Finally, the first one who spoke after the embrace was the Ragged One, and he said what will be told next.