Wherein is related the great adventure of the Cave of Montesinos, which is in the heart of La Mancha, which the brave don Quixote de La Mancha brought to a happy conclusion.
THE BRIDAL COUPLE TREATED don Quixote most warmly, obliged by his defense of their cause. On a par with his bravery they valued his wisdom, holding him for a Cid in arms and for a Cicero in eloquence. Good Sancho enjoyed three days at the expense of the newlyweds, who revealed that the deception of the false wound hadn’t been communicated to Quiteria, but rather it was Basilio’s cleverness alone, and he hoped it would have the effect we have seen. It’s quite true that he’d told his plan to some of his friends so that they could further his purpose at the right moment and support his deception.
“You cannot and should not call deceptions those that lead to honorable ends,” said don Quixote, and he went on to say that the marriage of those who love each other was the most excellent end, pointing out that the greatest enemy that love has is hunger and continual need, because love is all happiness, joy, and contentment, especially when the lover is in possession of the person he loves, against whom need and poverty are determined enemies. And he said all this to show Basilio that he should stop practicing the talents he has, which, although they give him fame, they don’t bring in money, and that he should try to earn a living by legal and industrious means, which the prudent and diligent never lack.
“The poor but honorable man—if a poor person can be honorable—has a jewel when he has a beautiful wife, and when she’s taken away, his honor is also taken away and obliterated. The beautiful and honorable woman whose husband is poor, deserves to be crowned with laurel and palm branches of victory and triumph. Beauty alone attracts desires in all beholders, just as a tasty morsel causes royal eagles and other high-flying birds to swoop down to it, but if this beauty is mingled with need and poverty, crows and kites and other birds of prey will attack it, and the woman who remains firm amidst all this can be called the crown of her husband.
“Look here, discreet Basilio,” added don Quixote, “I don’t know which philosopher held that there was just one good woman in the world, and he advised every man to think and believe that it was his own wife, and thus he would live content. I’m not married and up to now I’ve never planned to get married, yet I would be so bold as to advise anyone who asked, the way one should look for a woman whom he would like to marry. First, I’d advise him to look more into her reputation than her income, because the good woman doesn’t attain a good reputation just by being good, but rather by appearing to be so. Wanton acts and scandals done in public are much more damaging than misdeeds done in secret. If you take a good woman to your house, it will be easy to keep her and better her in that virtue. But if you bring a bad one, it will be difficult to correct her because it isn’t very easy to go from one extreme to the other. I don’t mean it’s impossible, I just mean it’s difficult.”
Sancho heard all this and said to himself: “This master of mine, when I say things of pith and substance usually says that I could take a pulpit in my hands and wander about the world preaching beautiful things; and I say about him that when he begins to link maxims together and give advice, not only could he take a pulpit in his hands, but two on each finger and roam through the plazas and be treated royally. May the devil take you, you knight errant—you know so much! I thought in my soul that he only knew about things relating to knight errantry, but there’s nothing he doesn’t nibble on and he puts his spoon into everything.
Sancho murmured this and his master overheard him and asked: “What are you muttering about, Sancho?”
“I’m not saying or muttering anything,” responded Sancho, “I was just saying to myself that I would have liked to have heard what your grace has said here before I got married, and maybe I’d be saying now: «The untethered ox licks himself well».”
“Is your Teresa that bad?” said don Quixote.
“She’s not bad,” responded Sancho, “but she’s not very good either, at least she’s not as good as I’d like.”
“You do wrong, Sancho,” said don Quixote, “in saying bad things about your wife. She is, after all, the mother of your children.”
“We don’t owe each other anything,” responded Sancho, “because she also says bad things about me whenever she feels like it, especially when she’s jealous. Then, even the devil can’t put up with her.”
So, they spent three days with the newlyweds, where they were entertained and served like royalty. Don Quixote asked the fencing licenciado if he’d provide a guide to lead him to the Cave of Montesinos, because he was quite eager to descend into it and see with his own eyes if the wonders they tell about it throughout the region were true. The licenciado told him he’d ask his cousin, a famous student and very keen about reading books of chivalry, who would be very willing to put him in the mouth of the cave itself and would show him the Lagunas de Ruidera, famous throughout La Mancha and even all of Spain; and he told him that he would find him quite entertaining, because the fellow knew how to write books and dedicate them to princes. The cousin came riding a she-ass in foal, whose packsaddle was placed over a rug or saddle-cloth of many colors. Sancho saddled Rocinante and got his donkey ready, put their provisions as well as the cousin’s in his saddlebags, and they all commended themselves to God, and bidding farewell to everyone, they got on their way, taking the road toward the famous Cave of Montesinos.
On the road, don Quixote asked the cousin what his pastimes, profession, and studies were. To which he responded that he was by profession a humanist, and his pursuits and studies were writing books to be published, all of them of enormous benefit to and no less entertaining for the republic. One of them was called The Book of Liveries where he describes seven-hundred- three uniforms with their colors, mottos, and emblems, where courtly knights can pick and choose those that they want for times of holidays, without asking others or wracking their brains, as they say, to find the ones suited to their tastes and desires.
“I offer the jealous, the disdained, the forgotten, and the absent, garb that’s appropriate and fits them to a tee. Another book I have, which I’ll call Metamorphoseos, or the Spanish Ovid, also a new and clever creation, because in it I imitate Ovid in a burlesque way, and I describe who Giralda of Seville and the Angel of Magdalena were; I state who the sewer called «Vecinguerra» in Cordova was named after; I say who or what the Bulls of Guisando were; the Sierra Morena; the fountains of Leganitos and Lavapiés in Madrid, not forgetting the ones called «Piojo», the «Caño Dorado», and the «Priora» —all this, with their allegories, metaphors, and transformations, in such a way that they will delight, amaze, and edify all at the same time. Another book I have I call The Supplement to Polydore Vergil, which deals with the invention of things, and shows great erudition and study, because I elucidate and explain in an elegant style of the significant things Polydore failed to say. Vergil forgot to declare who the first person who had a cold was, and the first one to use ointments to cure the French pox and I clarify all this, using more than twenty-five authorities, so your grace can see that I’ve worked assiduously and that the book will be useful to everyone.”
Sancho had listened attentively to what the cousin had said, and replied: “Tell me, señor—and may God give you good fortune in publishing your books—who was the first person to scratch his head? I think it must have been our father, Adam.”
“Yes, it must have been,” responded the cousin, “because there’s no doubt that Adam had a head and hair, and this being so, since he was the first man in the world, sometime or other he must have scratched it.”
“That’s what I think,” responded Sancho, “but tell me now, who was the first acrobat in the world?”
“In truth, brother,” responded the cousin, “I won’t be able to answer that until I study the matter, which I’ll do when I get back to where my books are, and I’ll give you a report when I see you again since this won’t be the last time we’ll meet.”
“Well, look, señor,” responded Sancho, “you don’t need to go to that trouble, because I’ve just hit on the answer. The first acrobat in the world must have been Lucifer, when they threw him out of heaven and he went tumbling into the abyss.”
“You’re right, my friend,” said the cousin.
And don Quixote said: “This question and answer aren’t yours, Sancho. You must have heard someone else say them.”
“Hush, señor,” replied Sancho, “if I start asking and answering questions like that, I won’t finish in a week—as if I need help from my neighbors in asking foolish things and answering with nonsense.”
“Sancho, you’ve said more than you know,” said don Quixote, “for there are some people who tire themselves trying to figure things out that, once they’re learned and proven, turn out to be worthless knowledge.”
They spent the day in these and other pleasurable conversations, and that night they lodged in a small village where the cousin said to don Quixote that the Cave of Montesinos was no more than two leagues away, and if he decided to go into it, they should provide themselves with rope so that he could tie it to himself and be lowered into its depths.
Don Quixote said that even though the cave reached the abyss, he had to see how deep it was, and so he bought six hundred feet of rope, and the next day at two in the afternoon, they arrived at the cave, whose mouth is spacious and wide, but filled with thorny bushes, wild fig trees, brambles and briars, and so thickly overgrown that they obscure and conceal the cave. When they saw it, the cousin dismounted first, then Sancho, and then don Quixote, whom they tied firmly with the rope. While they were making him fast, Sancho said to him: “Be careful your grace, señor mío, and don’t bury yourself alive, nor get yourself in a position where you’re like a bottle they hang in a well to get cold. It’s none of your grace’s affair to investigate into what must be worse than a dungeon.”
“Just keep tying and stop talking,” responded don Quixote, “because such an undertaking as this, Sancho my friend, is reserved for me.”
The guide then said: “I beg your grace, señor don Quixote, to look carefully and examine with a hundred eyes what there is inside. Perhaps there’ll be things that I can put in my book of transformations.”
“«The tambourine is in the hands of him who knows how to play it well»,” responded Sancho Panza.
This having been said, when they finished tying don Quixote, not over the armor, but rather over the doublet, he said: “We should have also gotten a little cowbell that could be tied next to me on this very rope, by the ringing of which you could tell if I still was being lowered and was still alive. But this isn’t possible now, so it’s in God’s hands, and may He guide me.”
And then he got onto his knees and offered a prayer quietly to heaven, asking God to help him and give him a happy outcome of this seemingly dangerous and novel adventure, and in a low voice he said: “Oh, señora of my actions and movements, bright and peerless Dulcinea del Toboso! If the prayers and entreaties of this, your fortunate lover, reach your ears, by your unparalleled beauty I beg you to hear them. They are only to beg you not to deny me your favor and protection now when I need them the most. I’m going to plunge, engulf, and sink myself into the abyss I have in front of me, only so that the world might know that if you favor me, there’s no impossible feat that I cannot take on and accomplish.”
Once he’d said this, he approached the pit, and saw that it wasn’t possible to let himself down nor find a way to enter, except by hacking a passage away by force of arms, so he took his sword and began to chop away and cut the brambles at the mouth of the cave, the noise and commotion from which caused a multitude of crows to fly out; so thick and so fast did they do it that they knocked don Quixote to the ground. And if he’d been as superstitious as he was a Catholic Christian, he would have taken it to be a bad omen and wouldn’t have entered such a place. Finally, he got up, and seeing that there were no further crows or other night birds such as bats (which also flew out with the crows), he gave the rope to the cousin and Sancho, and let himself be lowered into the depths of the fearful cavern. As he went down, Sancho offered a blessing accompanied by a thousand signs of the cross, and said: “May God, and the Peña de Francia, together with the Trinity of Gaeta guide you, flower and cream of knights errant! There you go, the bravest man in the world, heart of steel, arms of bronze! God guide you, once again, and may He bring you back safe, sound, and unscathed, to the light of this life that you’re leaving in order to bury yourself in the darkness you seek!”
The cousin made almost the same prayers and petitions.
Don Quixote shouted to them to give him more and more rope and they gave it to him a bit at a time, and when the shouts coming up the cave, as if through a pipe were no longer audible and they had let down the six-hundred feet of rope, they felt they should bring don Quixote back up since they couldn’t give him more rope. Even so, they waited about half an hour, at the end of which they pulled the rope up and it was very light and there was no tension, seemingly indicating that don Quixote was left inside, and when Sancho realized that, he began to cry bitterly and pulled even faster to find out the truth. But when they had pulled up, in their opinion, a bit less than five-hundred feet, they felt some weight and they rejoiced heartily. At sixty feet they saw don Quixote distinctly, and Sancho shouted to him, saying: “Welcome back, your grace, señor mío. We thought you were going to stay there for a generation.”
But don Quixote said nothing in response, and when they had taken him completely out, they saw that his eyes were closed, revealing that he was asleep. They stretched him out on the ground and untied him, yet with all this he didn’t wake up. But they turned him from side to side and shook him for a good while until he came to, stretching as if he’d been woken out of a very deep and heavy slumber. Looking all around as if he were distressed, he said: “May God forgive you, my friends, for you’ve plucked me from the most delicious and agreeable life and spectacle that any human being has ever seen or lived. Now I finally understand that all of the joys of this life are just shadows and dreams, or wither like a wildflower. Oh, unfortunate Montesinos! Oh, badly wounded Durandarte! Oh, unfortunate Belerma! Oh, tearful Guadiana and you unfortunate daughters of Ruidera, whose waters are the tears that your beautiful eyes cried!”
The cousin and Sancho listened to don Quixote’s words, which he imparted as if he’d pulled them from his entrails with enormous pain. They begged him to help them understand what he was saying, and tell him what he’d seen in that hell.
“ ‘Hell’ you call it?” said don Quixote. “Don’t call it that because it doesn’t deserve it, as you’ll see soon enough.”
He asked them to give him something to eat, for he was ravenous. They spread the cousin’s pack-cloth on the green grass and went to the saddlebags for provisions, and once the three of them were seated in good fellowship and company, they ate lunch and dinner all at the same time. Once the cloth was removed, don Quixote de La Mancha said: “Nobody rise, and listen carefully, my sons.”