In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to
mind, there lived not long since one of those gentlemen that keep a lance
in the lance-rack, an old buckler, a lean hack, and a greyhound for
coursing. An olla of rather more beef than mutton, a salad on most nights,
scraps on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, and a pigeon or so extra on
Sundays, made away with three-quarters of his income. The rest of it went
in a doublet of fine cloth and velvet breeches and shoes to match for
holidays, while on week-days he made a brave figure in his best homespun.
He had in his house a housekeeper past forty, a niece under twenty, and a
lad for the field and market-place, who used to saddle the hack as well as
handle the bill-hook. The age of this gentleman of ours was bordering on
fifty; he was of a hardy habit, spare, gaunt-featured, a very early riser
and a great sportsman. They will have it his surname was Quixada or
Quesada (for here there is some difference of opinion among the authors
who write on the subject), although from reasonable conjectures it seems
plain that he was called Quexana. This, however, is of but little
importance to our tale; it will be enough not to stray a hair's breadth
from the truth in the telling of it.
You must know, then, that the above-named gentleman whenever he was at
leisure (which was mostly all the year round) gave himself up to reading
books of chivalry with such ardour and avidity that he almost entirely
neglected the pursuit of his field-sports, and even the management of his
property; and to such a pitch did his eagerness and infatuation go that he
sold many an acre of tillageland to buy books of chivalry to read, and
brought home as many of them as he could get. But of all there were none
he liked so well as those of the famous Feliciano de Silva's composition,
for their lucidity of style and complicated conceits were as pearls in his
sight, particularly when in his reading he came upon courtships and
cartels, where he often found passages like "the reason of the unreason
with which my reason is afflicted so weakens my reason that with reason I
murmur at your beauty;" or again, "the high heavens, that of your divinity
divinely fortify you with the stars, render you deserving of the desert
your greatness deserves." Over conceits of this sort the poor gentleman
lost his wits, and used to lie awake striving to understand them and worm
the meaning out of them; what Aristotle himself could not have made out or
extracted had he come to life again for that special purpose. He was not
at all easy about the wounds which Don Belianis gave and took, because it
seemed to him that, great as were the surgeons who had cured him, he must
have had his face and body covered all over with seams and scars. He
commended, however, the author's way of ending his book with the promise
of that interminable adventure, and many a time was he tempted to take up
his pen and finish it properly as is there proposed, which no doubt he
would have done, and made a successful piece of work of it too, had not
greater and more absorbing thoughts prevented him.
Many an argument did he have with the curate of his village (a learned
man, and a graduate of Siguenza) as to which had been the better knight,
Palmerin of England or Amadis of Gaul. Master Nicholas, the village
barber, however, used to say that neither of them came up to the Knight of
Phoebus, and that if there was any that could compare with him it was Don
Galaor, the brother of Amadis of Gaul, because he had a spirit that was
equal to every occasion, and was no finikin knight, nor lachrymose like
his brother, while in the matter of valour he was not a whit behind him.
In short, he became so absorbed in his books that he spent his nights from
sunset to sunrise, and his days from dawn to dark, poring over them; and
what with little sleep and much reading his brains got so dry that he lost
his wits. His fancy grew full of what he used to read about in his books,
enchantments, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds, wooings, loves,
agonies, and all sorts of impossible nonsense; and it so possessed his
mind that the whole fabric of invention and fancy he read of was true,
that to him no history in the world had more reality in it. He used to say
the Cid Ruy Diaz was a very good knight, but that he was not to be
compared with the Knight of the Burning Sword who with one back-stroke cut
in half two fierce and monstrous giants. He thought more of Bernardo del
Carpio because at Roncesvalles he slew Roland in spite of enchantments,
availing himself of the artifice of Hercules when he strangled Antaeus the
son of Terra in his arms. He approved highly of the giant Morgante,
because, although of the giant breed which is always arrogant and
ill-conditioned, he alone was affable and well-bred. But above all he
admired Reinaldos of Montalban, especially when he saw him sallying forth
from his castle and robbing everyone he met, and when beyond the seas he
stole that image of Mahomet which, as his history says, was entirely of
gold. To have a bout of kicking at that traitor of a Ganelon he would have
given his housekeeper, and his niece into the bargain.
In short, his wits being quite gone, he hit upon the strangest notion that
ever madman in this world hit upon, and that was that he fancied it was
right and requisite, as well for the support of his own honour as for the
service of his country, that he should make a knight-errant of himself,
roaming the world over in full armour and on horseback in quest of
adventures, and putting in practice himself all that he had read of as
being the usual practices of knights-errant; righting every kind of wrong,
and exposing himself to peril and danger from which, in the issue, he was
to reap eternal renown and fame. Already the poor man saw himself crowned
by the might of his arm Emperor of Trebizond at least; and so, led away by
the intense enjoyment he found in these pleasant fancies, he set himself
forthwith to put his scheme into execution.
The first thing he did was to clean up some armour that had belonged to
his great-grandfather, and had been for ages lying forgotten in a corner
eaten with rust and covered with mildew. He scoured and polished it as
best he could, but he perceived one great defect in it, that it had no
closed helmet, nothing but a simple morion. This deficiency, however, his
ingenuity supplied, for he contrived a kind of half-helmet of pasteboard
which, fitted on to the morion, looked like a whole one. It is true that,
in order to see if it was strong and fit to stand a cut, he drew his sword
and gave it a couple of slashes, the first of which undid in an instant
what had taken him a week to do. The ease with which he had knocked it to
pieces disconcerted him somewhat, and to guard against that danger he set
to work again, fixing bars of iron on the inside until he was satisfied
with its strength; and then, not caring to try any more experiments with
it, he passed it and adopted it as a helmet of the most perfect
construction.
He next proceeded to inspect his hack, which, with more quartos than a
real and more blemishes than the steed of Gonela, that "tantum pellis et
ossa fuit," surpassed in his eyes the Bucephalus of Alexander or the
Babieca of the Cid. Four days were spent in thinking what name to give
him, because (as he said to himself) it was not right that a horse
belonging to a knight so famous, and one with such merits of his own,
should be without some distinctive name, and he strove to adapt it so as
to indicate what he had been before belonging to a knight-errant, and what
he then was; for it was only reasonable that, his master taking a new
character, he should take a new name, and that it should be a
distinguished and full-sounding one, befitting the new order and calling
he was about to follow. And so, after having composed, struck out,
rejected, added to, unmade, and remade a multitude of names out of his
memory and fancy, he decided upon calling him Rocinante, a name, to his
thinking, lofty, sonorous, and significant of his condition as a hack
before he became what he now was, the first and foremost of all the hacks
in the world.
Having got a name for his horse so much to his taste, he was anxious to
get one for himself, and he was eight days more pondering over this point,
till at last he made up his mind to call himself "Don Quixote," whence, as
has been already said, the authors of this veracious history have inferred
that his name must have been beyond a doubt Quixada, and not Quesada as
others would have it. Recollecting, however, that the valiant Amadis was
not content to call himself curtly Amadis and nothing more, but added the
name of his kingdom and country to make it famous, and called himself
Amadis of Gaul, he, like a good knight, resolved to add on the name of
his, and to style himself Don Quixote of La Mancha, whereby, he
considered, he described accurately his origin and country, and did honour
to it in taking his surname from it.
So then, his armour being furbished, his morion turned into a helmet, his
hack christened, and he himself confirmed, he came to the conclusion that
nothing more was needed now but to look out for a lady to be in love with;
for a knight-errant without love was like a tree without leaves or fruit,
or a body without a soul. As he said to himself, "If, for my sins, or by
my good fortune, I come across some giant hereabouts, a common occurrence
with knights-errant, and overthrow him in one onslaught, or cleave him
asunder to the waist, or, in short, vanquish and subdue him, will it not
be well to have some one I may send him to as a present, that he may come
in and fall on his knees before my sweet lady, and in a humble, submissive
voice say, 'I am the giant Caraculiambro, lord of the island of
Malindrania, vanquished in single combat by the never sufficiently
extolled knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, who has commanded me to present
myself before your Grace, that your Highness dispose of me at your
pleasure'?" Oh, how our good gentleman enjoyed the delivery of this
speech, especially when he had thought of some one to call his Lady! There
was, so the story goes, in a village near his own a very good-looking
farm-girl with whom he had been at one time in love, though, so far as is
known, she never knew it nor gave a thought to the matter. Her name was
Aldonza Lorenzo, and upon her he thought fit to confer the title of Lady
of his Thoughts; and after some search for a name which should not be out
of harmony with her own, and should suggest and indicate that of a
princess and great lady, he decided upon calling her Dulcinea del Toboso—she
being of El Toboso—a name, to his mind, musical, uncommon, and
significant, like all those he had already bestowed upon himself and the
things belonging to him.
To read more visit Project Gutenberg.
Ciao!
The Lonely Alchemist
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