About the marvelous things that the incomparable don Quixote said he had seen in the deep Cave of Montesinos, the impossibility and magnitude of which have led to this adventure being held apocryphal.
IT WAS ABOUT FOUR in the afternoon when the sun was partially covered by clouds, and with diminished and mild rays, it allowed don Quixote to relate to his illustrious listeners, without heat or discomfort, what he’d seen in the Cave of Montesinos, and he began like this: “At about twelve or fourteen times a man’s height down this pit, on the right-hand side there’s a recess and ledge large enough to put a cart with its mules. A bit of light trickles in through some fissures or holes far above on the surface. I saw this recess and ledge at a moment when I was dangling on the rope, tired of descending through that dark region without any specific destination, so I decided to stop there and rest a while. I shouted to you saying you shouldn’t let down any more rope until I told you to, but you must not have heard me. I pulled in the rope you were lowering and made a coil of it and sat on top, deep in thought, considering what I needed to do to get to the bottom, since there was now no one to suspend me.
“And while in these thoughts and confusion, suddenly, and without wanting to, I was overcome by a deep sleep, and when least I expected it, not knowing how, I woke up and found myself in the middle of the most beautiful, pleasant, and delightful meadow that Nature could have created, nor could the most ingenious human imagination dream up. I opened my eyes and rubbed them and saw that I was not dreaming, but was wide awake. Even so, I felt my head and chest to assure myself it was really me who was there, and not some kind of body-less and false phantom. But my sense of touch, my feeling, the well-ordered reasoning I did with myself, convinced me I was there as I’m now here.
“Then I saw a sumptuous royal palace or castle, whose ramparts and walls seemed to be transparent and made of clear glass, and when its great doors opened, I saw coming out toward me a venerable old man, dressed in a cloak made of purple flannel that dragged behind him. On his shoulders and chest was a scholar’s hood of green satin, and on his head he was wearing a black Milanese cap, and his very-white beard extended below his waist. He was unarmed except for a rosary in his hand whose small beads were the size of walnuts and the large ones the size of an average ostrich egg. His demeanor, mien, and the dignity of his stately presence, severally and together, amazed me and filled me with wonder. He approached me and the first thing he did was to embrace me tightly, and then said: ‘It’s been a long time, brave knight don Quixote de La Mancha, that those in this lonely place have been waiting to see you so that you can tell the world what is in this deep cave—called the CAVE OF MONTESINOS—that you’ve entered, and it’s a deed that has been reserved for your invincible heart and your stupendous courage only. Come with me, most illustrious señor, for I want to show you the wonders this transparent palace hides, of which I’m the governor and perpetual chief guardian, because I’m Montesinos himself, from whom the cave takes its name.’
“Scarcely had I heard him say that he was Montesinos when I asked him if it was true what they told about him in the world above, that he’d removed his great friend Durandarte’s heart with a small dagger from the middle of his chest and taken it to the señora Belerma, as he’d requested just before he died.
“He told me they said was the absolute truth, except for the dagger business, because it was neither a dagger nor was it small, but rather a sharp poniard with a point like an awl.”
“That poniard must have been made by Ramón de Hoces in Seville,” said Sancho.“
“I don’t know” don Quixote went on, “but it can’t have been made by this poniard-maker, since Ramón de Hoces was yesterday, and what happened in Roncesvalles—where this misfortune occurred—was many years ago, and this is of no importance, nor does it affect or alter the truth or context of the story.”
“That’s the truth,” responded the cousin. “Go on with your story, señor don Quixote, for I’m listening with the greatest pleasure in the world.”
“And I’m telling it with no less pleasure,” responded don Quixote. “I was saying that the venerable Montesinos took me into the crystal palace, where, in an excessively cool room on the ground floor, there was an exquisitely made marble sepulcher constructed of alabaster, on top of which was a knight stretched out full length, not made of bronze, marble, or jasper, but of pure flesh and blood. His right hand—which seemed to me to be a bit hairy and sinewy, proof that its owner was very strong—was placed over his heart. And before I could ask Montesinos anything, seeing me amazed looking at the man on the sepulcher, he said: ‘This is my friend Durandarte, flower and mirror of the enamored and brave knights of his time. That French enchanter that they say is the child of the devil, Merlin, has him held enchanted here, as he has me and many others. And I’d say he’s not the child of the devil, but rather he knows a bit more than the devil. How, and for what reason, he has us enchanted, no one knows, but it will be revealed in time, and I imagine that time is not far off. What most has me in wonder is that I know, just as it’s day right now, that Durandarte finished his life in my arms, and after his death I removed his heart with my own hands. In truth it must have weighed two pounds, and according to the natural philosophers, the man who has a large heart is endowed with a greater courage than him who has a small one. This being so, and since this knight really died, how is it he’s able to lament and sigh from time to time, as if he were alive?’
“After this had been said, the poor Durandarte, in a very loud voice, said:
“When the venerable Montesinos heard that, he got on his knees before the doleful knight, and with tears in his eyes, he said: ‘Señor Durandarte, dear cousin of mine, I did what you commanded me to do on that fatal day of our loss. I removed your heart as well as I could and didn’t leave the least bit of it in your chest. I cleaned it with a handkerchief trimmed with lace, and I raced off to France with it, having first put you in the bosom of the earth, with so many tears that they sufficed to wash my hands and cleanse away the blood from having opened you up. Then, cousin of my soul, in the first village I came to when I left Roncesvalles, I put a pinch of salt on your heart so it wouldn’t smell bad, and so it would be, if not fresh, at least cured when in the presence of señora Belerma, who, together with you and me and Guadiana, your squire, and with the duenna Ruidera and her seven daughters and two nieces, and many other friends and acquaintances, are held enchanted here by the sage Merlin these many years, and although more than five-hundred have gone by, not one of us has died. Only Ruidera and her daughters and nieces are no longer here. Out of the compassion Merlin must have had for their tears, he changed them into as many lakes, which in the world of the living and in the province of La Mancha are known as the Lagunas de Ruidera. The seven belong to the monarchs of Spain, and the two nieces to the very holy order of San Juan. Guadiana, your squire, who bewailed your fate as well, was changed into a river bearing his same name, and when he got to the surface of the earth and saw the sun of another sky, his grief was so great when he realized that he was leaving you, he submerged into the bowels of the earth. But since it isn’t possible for him to curb his natural flow, from time to time he comes out and shows himself where the sun and people can see him. The lagunas already mentioned supply him with their water with which, along with many other sources, he enters into Portugal, magnificently, and very wide. But even so, wherever he goes, he shows his sadness and melancholy and doesn’t care to raise in his waters good-tasting and worthy fish, but rather coarse and bad-tasting ones, quite unlike the fish from the golden Tajo River. And what I’m telling you now, my cousin, I’ve told you many times, and since you don’t answer me, I deduce that either you don’t believe me, or you don’t hear me, and the grief all this gives me only God knows.
“ ‘I want to give you some news that, although it may not relieve your pain, at least won’t increase it in any way. I want you to know that you have in your presence—open your eyes and you’ll see him—that great knight don Quixote de La Mancha, who has revived anew and with greater success than in former ages the now forgotten order of knight errantry, and by whose means and favor we may get to be disenchanted—for great deeds are reserved for great men.’
“ ‘And if it doesn’t come to pass,’ responded the doleful Durandarte, with a faint and low voice, ‘if it doesn’t come to pass, my cousin, I say, «Patience and shuffle the cards».’ And turning on his side, he went back to his accustomed silence without saying another word.
“Just then I heard loud howls and lamentations, accompanied by profound sighs and pathetic sobs. I turned my head and saw through the walls of glass that a procession consisting of two rows of very beautiful maidens, all of them dressed in mourning, with white turbans in the Turkish fashion on their heads. At the end of the two rows came a lady, for in her dignity she appeared to be one, also dressed in black, with a white veil so long that it kissed the ground. Her turban was twice the size of the biggest one worn by the others. She had eyebrows that grew into each other, and her nose was a bit flat, but her lips were red. Her teeth, when she showed them, had gaps, and were not very straight, although they were as white as peeled almonds. In her hands she was carrying a piece of linen and in it I could see a mummified heart, so dry it was. Montesinos told me that all those people in that procession were servants of Durandarte and Belerma who were enchanted along with their master and mistress, and the last person, who was carrying the heart wrapped in linen, was señora Belerma herself, who, with her maidens, made that procession four times a week, and sang—or rather cried—dirges over the body and the piteous heart of her cousin. And if she seemed a bit ugly to me, or at least not as beautiful as her fame would lead you to believe, it was because of the bad nights and worse days she spent in that enchantment, as you could see in the bags under her eyes and in her yellow coloring.
“ ‘And don’t think that her yellow complexion and the bags under her eyes are due the monthly ailment common to women—because it has been many months and even years since she has had it, nor has it even appeared at her gates—but rather because of the pain she feels in her heart for the one she always has in her hands, which reminds her and brings to her memory the misfortune of her unlucky lover. If it weren’t for this, the great Dulcinea del Toboso, so celebrated in these parts and even throughout the world, wouldn’t equal her beauty, grace, and dash.’
“ ‘Careful,’ I said, ‘señor don Montesinos. Tell your story as you should, since you know that all comparisons are odious, and that’s why there’s no reason to compare anyone with anyone else. The beautiful Dulcinea del Toboso is who she is, and señora doña Belerma is who she is and has been, and let’s leave it at that.’
“To which he responded to me: ‘Señor don Quixote, forgive me, your grace. I confess I was wrong and incorrect when I said that señora Dulcinea would hardly equal Belerma since it was enough for me to have understood through I don’t know what kind of hunch that your grace is her knight, for which I’d bite my tongue rather than compare her to anything but heaven itself.’
“With this apology that the great Montesinos gave me, my heart calmed down from the distress I got when I heard that my lady was being compared with Belerma.”
“And I’m astonished,” said Sancho, “that your grace didn’t jump on that old guy and kick his bones to bits and yank his beard clean off his face.”
“No, Sancho my friend,” responded don Quixote. “It wouldn’t have been right for me to do that, because we’re all supposed to show respect for old people even if they aren’t knights, but mainly to those who are knights and are enchanted. I know very well neither of us owed each other anything after the many questions and answers that passed between us.”
At this point, the cousin said: “I don’t know, señor don Quixote how your grace in the short time you were down there saw so many things and conversed and reacted to so much.”
“How long ago did I go down?” asked don Quixote.
“A little more than an hour ago,” responded Sancho.
“That cannot be,” replied don Quixote, “because night came upon me, then morning arrived, then night and morning came again three times. So by my count I’ve been in that remote area, hidden from our sight, for three days.”
“My master must be telling the truth,” said Sancho, “since everything that happens to him is by enchantment, maybe what to us seems to be an hour must seem to be three days and nights down there.”
“That’s what it must be,” responded don Quixote.
“And did your grace eat during all that time, señor mío?” asked the cousin.
“I didn’t eat a bite,” responded don Quixote, “nor was I hungry—I didn’t even think about it.”
“And do enchanted people eat?”
“They don’t eat,” responded don Quixote, “nor do they have bowel movements, although it’s thought that their fingernails, beards, and hair do grow.”
“And do the enchanted people sleep, señor?” asked Sancho.
“Certainly not,” responded don Quixote, “at least in these three days that I was with them, none of them closed an eye, and neither did I.”
“Here’s where that proverb fits in well,” said Sancho, “that says: «tell me the company you keep and I’ll tell you who you are». Your grace joins enchanted people who are fasting and always awake, and you see how easy it is for you not to eat or sleep while you’re with them. But excuse me your grace, señor mío, if I tell you that of everything you’ve said here, may God carry me off—I was going to say THE DEVIL—if I believe a single thing.”
“How not?” said the cousin. “Is señor don Quixote going to lie, and even if he wanted to, there hasn’t been enough time to invent and dream up so many millions of lies?”
“I don’t believe that my master is lying,” responded Sancho.
“If not, what do you believe?” asked don Quixote.
“I believe,” responded Sancho, “that Merlin, or those who enchanted the crowd of people that your grace says you saw and spoke with down there, put into your head or memory all that rubbish that you’ve told us, and everything that remains to be told.”
“That might be the case, Sancho,” replied don Quixote, “but it really isn’t, because what I told you, I saw with my own eyes and touched with my own hands. What will you say when I tell you right now that among an infinite number of other things that Montesinos showed me—which at our leisure and at appropriate moments I’ll tell you during the course of our travels, since they would be out of place here—he pointed out to me three peasant girls in those fields who went frisking and flitting about like goats, and hardly had I seen them when I recognized that one of them was the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso, and the other two were those same peasant girls accompanying her, with whom we spoke outside of El Toboso. I asked Montesinos if he knew them. He told me that he didn’t, but he thought they must be some enchanted upper-class ladies, and for me not to be surprised, because there were many other ladies from past and present times, enchanted in different and strange figures, among whom he knew Queen Guinevere and her duenna Quintañona, pouring wine for Lancelot «when from Britain he came».”
When Sancho Panza heard his master say this, he thought he would lose his mind or die of laughter. Since he knew the truth of the faked enchantment of Dulcinea, of whom he’d been the enchanter and the inventor of the whole thing, he realized that his master was undoubtedly out of his mind and totally crazy, and so he said: “It was a bad moment and a worse time, and on an ill-fated day that your grace, my dear master, went down into the nether world, and at an unfortunate moment that you came into contact with señor Montesinos, who sent you back to us in such a state. You were better off here when you were fully sane, just as God made you, saying maxims and giving advice at every turn, and not as you are now, telling the greatest absurdities that can be imagined.”
“Since I know you, Sancho,” responded don Quixote, “I know not to pay heed what you say.”
“And I won’t heed what your grace says either,” replied Sancho, “not even if you hit or even kill me for what I’ve said or plan to say, unless you correct and emend what you said. But tell me, your grace, now that we have made up, how was it that you recognized the lady our mistress? And if you spoke with her, what did she say back?”
“I recognized her,” responded don Quixote, “because she was wearing the same outfit as when you first pointed her out to me. I spoke to her, but she didn’t answer a word, but rather turned her back on me and went off at full speed, so that even a dart wouldn’t have caught her. I tried to follow her, and would have, if Montesinos hadn’t advised not to bother because it would be futile, especially since the time was approaching for me to leave the cave. He told me also that the time would come when he would tell me how he and Belerma and Durandarte, and all the others who were there, could be disenchanted. But what most distressed me of everything I saw there was that while Montesinos was saying those words, one of the companions of the unfortunate Dulcinea came up to me without my noticing her, and with her eyes filled with tears, and with a troubled and muted voice, told me: ‘My lady Dulcinea del Toboso kisses your grace’s hands and begs you to tell her how you are; and that, since she’s in great need, she begs you, as earnestly as she can, please to lend her, against this new cotton shawl I have with me, a half dozen reales, or whatever your grace might have. She promises to pay it back to you very soon.’
“That request shocked and stunned me, and I turned to señor Montesinos and asked him: ‘Is it possible, señor Montesinos, that these enchanted upper-class people suffer from need?’ To which he responded: ‘Believe me, your grace, señor don Quixote de La Mancha, this thing they call NEED is found anywhere and everywhere and affects everyone, and even the enchanted are not spared from it. And since señora Dulcinea del Toboso has sent someone to request those six reales and the security is good, it would seem that there’s nothing to do but lend them to her. She must be in a real bind.’ ‘I won’t take any security,’ I responded, ‘nor can I give her what she requests because I have only four reales.’ I gave them to her, and they were the ones that you, Sancho, gave me the other day to give as alms to poor people we might meet along the road—and I said to the girl: ‘Tell your mistress, my friend, that her travails grieve me in my soul, and I wish I were a Fugger so I could alleviate them. And I want her to know that I can’t, nor should I enjoy good health while I’m lacking her company and conversation, and I beg her grace as earnestly as I can to allow her humble servant and overwrought knight to see and talk with her. You will also tell her that when least she expects it, she’ll hear that I’ve made an oath and a vow, in the style of the one that the Marqués de Mantua made to avenge his nephew Valdovinos when he found him on the point of dying on the mountain, which was that he wouldn’t eat bread off a tablecloth, and other trifles that he added, until he avenged him. So I’ll not rest, but will roam the seven parts of the world even more diligently than don Pedro de Portugal, until I disenchant her.’ ‘All this and more your grace owes my mistress,’ responded the maiden. And taking the four reales, instead of bowing to me, she cut a caper two full yards in the air.”
“Oh, Holy God!” Sancho shouted at that point, “is it possible that enchanters and enchantments have so much power that they have made my sane master crazy? Señor, señor, for God’s sake, your grace should look out for yourself and consider your honor, and don’t believe this nonsense that has impaired you and taken away your wits.”
“Since you love me, Sancho, you’re talking this way,” said don Quixote, “and since you’re not experienced in things of the world, all things that are a bit difficult seem impossible to you. But the time will come, as I’ve told you before, when I’ll tell you about the things that I’ve seen down there, and they’ll make you believe the things I’ve just told you, the truth of which doesn’t allow an objection or dispute.”