About the omens that don Quixote saw when he entered his village, with other events that embellish and authenticate this great history.
AT THE entrance of which, according to Cide Hamete, don Quixote saw two boys arguing on the threshing floor of the village, and one of them said to the other: “Don’t wear yourself out, Periquillo—you’ll never see her again as long as you live.”
Don Quixote heard this and said to Sancho: “Do you realize, my friend, what that boy has said: ‘You’ll never see her again as long as you live’?”
“So—what difference does it make,” responded Sancho, “that he said that?”
“What difference?” replied don Quixote. “Don’t you see that if you apply those words to my situation, it means that I won’t see Dulcinea again.”
Sancho was on the point of responding when he saw a hare being pursued by many hunters and greyhounds through the countryside. The hare ran over to take shelter, and crouched under the donkey. Sancho picked it up easily and gave it to don Quixote, who was saying: “Malum signum, malum signum! A hare flees, greyhounds pursue it, Dulcinea doesn’t appear.”
“Your grace is acting very strangely,” said Sancho. “Let’s suppose that this hare is Dulcinea del Toboso and these greyhounds are the foul enchanters who transformed her into a peasant. She flees, I catch her and put her in your grace’s care, and in your arms and you’re caressing her. What bad sign is this and what bad omen can be read here?”
The boys who had been arguing came over to see the hare, and Sancho asked one of them why they were arguing. He was answered by the one who had said “you’ll never see her again as long as you live” that he’d taken a cricket cage from the other boy that he didn’t plan ever to return to him as long as he lived.
Sancho took four quarter-reales from his purse and gave them to the boy for the cage and put it in don Quixote’s hands saying:” Here, señor, are your omens, broken and crushed, and they have no more to do with our affairs, the way I look at it, uneducated as I am, than the clouds of yesteryear. And if I remember correctly, I’ve heard the priest of our village say that it’s not right for wise Christian people to put any stock in such foolishness, and even your grace himself has said the same thing in recent days, giving me to understand that all those Christians who put stock in omens are stupid. There’s no need to insist on this too much. Let’s just keep going and enter our village.”
The hunters came over, asked for their hare, and don Quixote gave it to them. They moved on and at the entrance to the village they came across the priest and Sansón Carrasco, praying in a little meadow. Now, Sancho Panza had put the buckram robe covered with painted flames—which they gave him at the duke’s castle the night that Altisidora revived—over the donkey and over the bundle of arms and armor to be a kind of sumpter cloth. He’d put the penitent’s hat on the donkey’s head as well, and it was the most unusually transformed and adorned donkey in the world.
The two were immediately recognized by the priest and the bachelor, who ran to them with open arms. Don Quixote got off his horse and embraced both of them warmly. The boys, who are all-seeing lynxes, noticed the penitent’s hat on the donkey and went to see him, and yelled to the others: “Come on, boys, and you’ll see Sancho Panza’s donkey, handsomer than Mingo, and don Quixote’s horse thinner than ever.”
So, surrounded by boys and accompanied by the priest and the bachelor, they entered the village and went to don Quixote’s house, and found the housekeeper and the niece waiting at the door, for news had reached them about their arrival. Teresa Panza, wife of Sancho, heard neither more nor less news, and she, uncombed and without a shawl, leading Sanchica, her daughter, by the hand, went to see her husband. And seeing him not as well dressed as she thought a governor should be, said to him: “How is it, my husband, that you’re returning on foot and footsore, and you look more like a man without a government than a governor?”
“Hush, Teresa,” responded Sancho, “for many times «where there are stakes there’s no bacon». Let’s go home and there you’ll hear wonders. I’m bringing money, which is the important thing, earned by my cleverness, and without hurting anyone.”
“You bring money, my good husband,” said Teresa, “and no matter how you earned it, you won’t have invented any new ways of getting it.”
Sanchica hugged her father and asked him if he brought anything for her, for she was waiting for him like the rains of May. And holding on to his belt, and with his wife holding his other hand, the daughter leading the donkey, they all went home, leaving don Quixote in his house, in the care of his niece and housekeeper, and in the company of the priest and the bachelor.
Don Quixote, not waiting an instant, shut himself up with the bachelor and priest, and in a few words told how he was vanquished and that he was obliged not to leave his village for a year, during which time he planned to keep his promise to the letter, without violating it the least bit, for as a knight errant he was obliged by the rigorous order of knight errantry, and that he planned to be a shepherd during that year, and pass his time in the solitude of the fields where he could vent his amorous thoughts with a free rein, engaged in that pastoral and virtuous vocation, and if they were not prevented by urgent business elsewhere, they might want to be his companions. He would take care of buying enough sheep and other livestock so that they could be legitimately called shepherds, and that the most important piece of business had already been taken care of, because he’d figured out names for them that fit them to a tee.
The priest asked him to tell them what they were. Don Quixote responded that he himself would be the shepherd QUIXOTIZ, and the bachelor, CARRASCÓN; and the priest, the shepherd CURAMBRO, and Sancho Panza, the shepherd PANCINO.
They were dumbfounded to see the new madness of don Quixote. But so that he wouldn’t leave town again on his knight errantries, and hoping that in that year he would recover, they went along with his new plan, and approved it as wise, and offered to be his companions in his new vocation.
“And what’s more,” said Sansón Carrasco, “since, as everybody already knows, I’m a most celebrated poet, I’ll write pastoral or courtly verses—whichever suits my fancy—all the time to entertain us on those by-roads on which we have to travel. And what we most need to do, señores míos, is choose names for the shepherdess that each one plans to celebrate in his verses, and that we not leave a single tree, no matter how hard its wood is, where we don’t inscribe her name, as is the custom of enamored shepherds.”
“That’s exactly right,” responded don Quixote, “although I’m free to choose a name for an imaginary shepherdess, here I already have Dulcinea del Toboso, the glory of these river-banks, the adornment of these meadows, the sustenance of beauty, the cream of wit, and finally, the subject on which all praises can repose, no matter how exaggerated they may be.”
“That’s the truth,” said the priest, “but we others will seek meeker shepherdesses, who, if they’re not perfect, at least they’ll approach perfection.”
To which Sansón Carrasco added: “And if we don’t find any, we’ll use the names of those who appear in books, of which the world is full: FÍLIDAS, AMARILIS, DIANAS, FLÉRIDAS, and BELISARDAS. Since they’re on sale in the marketplaces, we can easily buy them and have them for our own. If my lady, or maybe I should say «my shepherdess», should be named Ana, I’ll celebrate her using the name ANARDA; and if it’s Francisca, I’ll call her FRANCENIA; if it’s Lucía, LUCINDA; and that’s the way it works. And Sancho Panza, if he enters our fraternity, can celebrate his wife Teresa Panza with the name TERESAINA.”
Don Quixote was amused to hear how these names were applied, and the priest praised don Quixote’s chaste and honorable resolve greatly, and offered once again to keep him company when his necessary obligations didn’t keep him away. With this, they bade him farewell, and begged and advised him to be careful with his health, and to eat only those things that were good for him.
As luck would have it, the niece and housekeeper overheard the conversation of the three of them, and as soon as they left, they both went in to don Quixote’s room and the niece said: “What’s all this, señor uncle? Now that we were thinking that your grace came back to stay at home to enjoy a quiet and honorable life, you want to start a new labyrinth, turning yourself into: “Little shepherd, you who come, / Little shepherd, you who go?” In truth, «the barley is too hard to make pastoral flutes with».”
To which the housekeeper added: “Can you withstand the siestas of summer, the night air of winter, the howling of wolves? Certainly not. This is a profession and calling for robust men, hardened by the weather, and raised for that job since they were in diapers. All things considered, it’s better to be a knight errant than a shepherd. Look, señor, take my advice—not given with a stomach filled with bread and wine, but fasting, and with fifty years under my belt—stay home and tend to your estate, confess frequently, help out the poor, and it’ll be on my soul if things turn out wrong.”
“Hush, my daughters,” responded don Quixote, “I know what I need to do. Take me to bed—I don’t feel quite right—and be certain that whether I’m a knight errant or a future shepherd, I’ll not fail to tend to your needs, as you’ll see proven out.”
And the good daughters, which the niece and housekeeper were, took him to bed, where they gave him something to eat and pampered him as much as they could.