“TO THINK things in this life will endure forever in their current state is to think the unthinkable. It seems rather that life is circular, I mean, goes round and round. Spring pursues summer, summer harvest time, harvest time the fall, and fall winter, and winter spring, and time thus revolves on this ever-moving wheel. Only human life races to its end, even swifter than time itself, without any hope of renewing itself, but rather it’s in the other life where time has no limits to curb it.” This is what Cide Hamete, the Muhammadan philosopher says. Many people without the illumination of faith, and only with natural intelligence, have understood the matter of the swiftness and instability of earthly life and the duration of the eternal life that we strive for. But here our author says all this relating to how quickly Sancho’s government came to an end, crumbled, and vanished into the shadows and smoke.
On the seventh night of the days of his government, Sancho was in bed, not filled with bread and wine, but rather with judgments, legal opinions, and the making of statutes and ordinances, when sleep, in spite of his hunger, began to close his eyelids. He suddenly heard the din of bells and shouts that made it seem like the whole ínsula was sinking. He sat up in bed and listened attentively to see if he could figure out what the cause of this uproar was. Not only did he have no idea what it was, but in addition to the din of voices and bells, he heard an infinite number of trumpets and drums, and he became more bewildered and filled with fright and terror. He stood up and put his slippers on (because the floor was damp) and without putting on a robe, or anything else, he went out of his room just when he saw more than twenty people coming toward him with lighted torches in their hands and with unsheathed swords, all of them shouting: “Emergency, emergency, señor governor, emergency! An infinite number of enemies has entered the ínsula, and we’re lost unless your cleverness and courage can save us!” With this noise, fury, and uproar they went where Sancho was, dumbfounded and stunned over what he heard and saw, and when they got to him, one of them said: “Arm yourself immediately, your lordship, if you don’t want yourself and this whole ínsula to perish.”
“What reason do I have to arm myself?” responded Sancho, “I don’t know anything about arms or rescuing. This matter is better left to my master, don Quixote, who will take care of it and set it straight in a flash. I, sinner that I am, don’t understand any of these troubles.”
“Oh, señor governor!” said another. “What indifference this is! Arm yourself—we’ve brought offensive and defensive arms. Come out to the plaza and be our guide and our captain, because by all rights it’s your responsibility since you’re our governor.”
“All right, arm me,” replied Sancho. And they took out two full-length body shields they had with them and they put them over what he was wearing, without letting him change into anything else—one behind and another in front. They pulled his arms out of some previously cut armholes, then they lashed them together with some rope so that he was bound up and splinted, as straight as a spindle, without being able to bend his knees or budge a single step. They put a lance in his hand he used to help keep himself upright. When he was thus armed, they instructed him to march out and guide and encourage them all. If he were their beacon and north star, they’d come out of the battle winners.
“How am I supposed to march out, woe is me?!” responded Sancho. “I can’t even bend my knees, because these shields that seem sewn to my flesh prevent me. What you have to do is carry me and put me on the ground across a doorway, or even standing in one, and in that way I’ll guard it with my lance or my body.”
“Walk, señor governor,” said another, “for it’s more fear than the shields that are preventing you from walking. Come on, move your feet because it’s late and the enemy force is growing, and the voices are getting louder, and the danger is mounting.”
The poor governor tried to move because of these persuasions and reproaches, and the result was that he fell headlong onto the floor and thought he was broken into pieces. He was like a tortoise, enclosed and covered by his shell, or like half a side of pork curing between planks, or rather like a ship that has run aground on the sand. Seeing him on the floor, those mischievous people showed him no compassion at all. Instead, they extinguished their torches, and their voices grew even louder and they shouted «TO ARMS!» once again very loudly. They stepped all over poor Sancho, giving an infinite number of sword thrusts on his shields, and if he hadn’t hunched up inside them, the poor governor would have had a bad time of it. Shrunk up in that confinement, he sweated and sweated more, and with all his heart he commended himself to God to deliver him from that danger.
Some people stumbled over him, others fell on him, and one of them even stood on top of him for a good while, and from that vantage point, as if he were on a watch tower, commanded the armies with shouts: “Come over here, for the enemy is heaviest here! Guard that gate, close that door, bar those stairs! Bring fire bombs and vats of boiling pitch. Barricade the streets with those mattresses!”
He named with great zeal all the details, instruments, and weaponry used in wars, with which one usually defends oneself in the assault of a city, and the beaten up Sancho, who heard and endured everything, said to himself: “Oh, if only the Lord were pleased to allow the ínsula to be captured, or if I could be dead or relieved from this great anguish!”
Heaven heard his prayer, and when least he expected it, he heard shouts that said: “Victory is ours! Victory! The enemy is fleeing in defeat! Señor governor, your grace, arise! Enjoy the conquest, and divide the spoils won from the enemy through the valor of this invincible arm!”
“Help me up,” said Sancho, with a doleful voice.
They helped him get up, and once he was on his feet he said: “Any enemy that I’ve vanquished, let them nail him to my forehead. I’ll not distribute any spoils, but rather ask and beg some friend, if I have any, to give me a swallow of wine because I’m wilted; and to dry my sweat because I’m really perspiring.”
They wiped him off and brought him some wine, and untied the shields, and he sat down on his bed and fainted from the shock and toil. Those who played the trick were ashamed for having made it so devastating. But when Sancho came to, it relieved the grief that his fainting spell had given them. He asked what time it was. They responded that it was dawn. He said nothing more and began to get dressed, shrouded in silence, and everyone looked at him and wondered why he was dressing so quickly. When he finished getting dressed, he went out to the stable one step at a time (since he couldn’t move very fast), and all those who were there followed him. When he came to the grey, he embraced him and gave him a kiss of friendship on his forehead, and not without tears in his eyes, said to him: “Come here my companion and friend, fellow sufferer in my travails and miseries. When I was together with you and had no thoughts other than mending your trappings or keeping your little body fed, my hours were happy, as were my days and years. But since I left you and climbed up the towers of ambition and pride, a thousand miseries, a thousand travails, and four thousand anxieties have crowded into my soul.”
While he was saying these words, he was putting the packsaddle on the donkey without anyone saying a word. Once the saddle was on the grey, with great discomfort and pain he mounted him, and began to speak to the steward, the secretary, the butler, and Pedro Recio, the doctor, who were all present: “Make way, señores míos, and let me go back to my former freedom. Let me seek my old life to bring me back from my current death. I wasn’t born to be a governor, nor to defend ínsulas from enemies that might want to attack them. I know how to plow and dig, to prune and to plant grapevines in the fields better than to make laws and defend provinces or kingdoms. «Saint Peter is well off in Rome». I mean that everyone is better off doing the job he was born for. A scythe is better for me that a governor’s scepter. I’d prefer to stuff myself with gazpacho than to be subject to the miseries of an arrogant doctor who starves me to death, and what’s more, I want to lie down in the shadow of an oak tree in the summer and dress in a sheepskin jacket—the kind with wool on the inside—in the winter, rather than to go to bed between Holland sheets and dressed in stables with the weight of the government on me. Stay with God, your graces, and tell the duke that «I was born naked and I’m naked now, I neither win nor lose». I mean, I came to this government without a blanca and I’m leaving without a blanca, quite the reverse of what happens with governors of other ínsulas. Make way, let me pass. I’m going to get my body plastered, for I fear all my ribs are crushed, thanks to my enemies who this night have trampled me.”
“It doesn’t need to be that way, señor governor,” said doctor Recio, “for I’ll give you a beverage against falls and beatings, which will restore you instantly to your former strength and hardiness, and as for food, I promise to mend my ways, and let you eat anything you might like abundantly.”
“It’s too late,” responded Sancho. “I’d as soon not go away as become a Turk. These are not pranks to be done twice. By God, I’d remain in this government or take on another one—even if it was given under glass—as I would fly to the sky without wings. I’m from the lineage of Panzas, and all of them are obstinate, and if once they say NO, NO it stands until the end of the world. Let the wings of the ant stay in this stable, those wings which took me into the skies only to be eaten by swifts and other birds, and let’s go back to walking on the ground with a sure step. If there are no fancy shoes of Cordovan leather, a person can still walk firmly with rough alpargatas made of rope. «Every Jack has his Jill» and «never stretch your feet beyond the sheet» and let me get by, for it’s getting late.”
To which the steward said: “Señor governor, we would very willingly let your grace go, although it would grieve us much to lose you. Your cleverness and Christian behavior make us wish you would stay. But it’s well known that every governor is obliged, before he leaves office, to give an accounting. Give your accounting for the ten days you were in office, and then go with God in peace.”
“Nobody can ask me for that,” responded Sancho, “except the duke himself. I’ll be seeing him soon, and I’ll tell everything to him; what’s more, since I’m leaving naked, there’s no other proof needed to see that I’ve governed like an angel.”
“By God, the great Sancho is right,” said doctor Recio, “and I’m of the opinion that we should let him go because the duke will be very pleased to see him.”
Everyone agreed and they let him go, offering first to escort him on his way, and anything else he might need for his comfort and convenience during his trip. Sancho said that he only wanted a bit of barley for the grey, and a chunk of cheese and half a loaf of bread for himself. Since the road was so short, he didn’t need more or better provisions. They all embraced him, and he, in tears, embraced everyone, and left them amazed as much by his words as by his unshakable resolve.