MAMBRINO’S HELMET
Rain fell in gentle drops, and Sancho was for going into the fulling mills,[441-1] but Don Quixote had taken such a disgust to them on account of the late joke that he would not enter them on any account; so turning aside to the right they came upon another road, different from that which they had taken the night before. Shortly afterwards Don Quixote perceived a man on horseback who wore on his head something that shone like gold, and the moment he saw him he turned to Sancho and said, “I think, Sancho, there is no proverb that is not true, all being maxims drawn from experience itself, the mother of all sciences, especially that one that says, ‘Where one door shuts, another opens.’ I say so because if last night fortune shut the door of the adventure we were looking for against us, cheating us with the fulling mills, it now opens wide another one for better and more certain adventure, and if I do not contrive to enter it, it will be my own fault, and I cannot lay it to my ignorance of fulling mills, or the darkness of the night. I say this because, if I mistake not, there comes toward us one who wears on his head the helmet of Mambrino,[442-2] concerning which I took the oath thou rememberest.”
“Mind what you say, your worship, and still more what you do,” said Sancho, “for I don’t want any more fulling mills to finish off fulling and knocking our senses out.”
“The devil take thee, man,” said Don Quixote; “what has a helmet to do with fulling mills?”
“I don’t know,” replied Sancho, “but, faith, if I might speak as I used, perhaps I could give such reasons that your worship would see you were mistaken in what you say.”
“How can I be mistaken in what I say, unbelieving traitor?” returned Don Quixote. “Tell me, seest thou not yonder knight coming towards us on a dappled gray steed, who has upon his head a helmet of gold?”
“What I see and make out,” answered Sancho, “is only a man on a gray ass like my own, who has something that shines on his head.”
“Well, that is the helmet of Mambrino,” said Don Quixote; “stand to one side and leave me alone with him; thou shalt see how, without saying a word, I shall bring this adventure to an issue and possess myself of the helmet I have so longed for.”
“I will take care to stand aside,” said Sancho; “but God grant, I say once more, that it may not be fulling mills again.”
“I have told thee, brother, on no account to mention those fulling mills to me again,” said Don Quixote, “or I vow—and I say no more—I’ll full the soul out of you.”
Sancho held his peace in dread lest his master should carry out the vow he had hurled like a bowl at him.
The fact of the matter as regards the helmet, steed, and knight that Don Quixote saw, was this: In that neighborhood there were two villages, one of them so small that it had neither apothecary’s shop, nor barber, which the other that was close to it had; so the barber of the larger served the smaller; and in it there was a sick man who required to be bled and another man who wanted to be shaved, and on this errand the barber was going, carrying with him a brass basin; but as luck would have it, as he was on the way it began to rain, and not to spoil his hat, which probably was a new one, he put the basin on his head, and being clean it glittered at half a league’s distance. He rode upon a gray ass, as Sancho said, and this was what made it seem to Don Quixote to be a dapple-gray steed and a knight and a golden helmet; for everything he saw he made to fall in with his crazy chivalry and ill errant notions; and when he saw the poor knight draw near, without entering into any parley with him, at Rocinante’s top speed he bore down upon him with the pike pointed low, fully determined to run him through and through, and as he reached him, without checking the fury of his charge, he cried to him, “Defend thyself, miserable being, or yield me of thine own accord that which is so reasonably my due.”
The barber, who without any expectation or apprehension of it saw this apparition coming down upon him, had no other way of saving himself from the stroke of the lance but to let himself fall off his ass; and no sooner had he touched the ground than he sprang up more nimbly than a deer and sped away across the plain faster than the wind.
He left the basin on the ground, with which Don Quixote contented himself, saying that the pagan had shown his discretion and imitated the beaver, which finding himself pressed by the hunters bites and cuts off with its teeth that for which by its natural instinct, it knows it is pursued.
He told Sancho to pick up the helmet, and he, taking it in his hands, said, “By God the basin is a good one, and worth a piece of eight[445-3] if it is worth a maravedi,” and handed it to his master, who immediately put it on his head, turning it round, now this way, now that, in search of the visor. Not finding it he said, “Clearly the pagan to whose measure this famous headpiece was first forged must have had a very large head; but the worst of it is half of it is wanting.”
When Sancho heard him call the basin a headpiece he was unable to restrain his laughter, but remembering his master’s wrath he checked himself in the midst of it.
“What art thou laughing at, Sancho?” said Don Quixote.
“I am laughing,” said he, “to think of the great head the pagan must have had who owned this helmet, for it looks exactly like a regular barber’s basin.”
“Dost thou know what I suspect, Sancho?” said Don Quixote; “that this wonderful piece of this enchanted helmet must by some strange accident have come into the hands of some one who was unable to recognize or realize its value, and who, not knowing what he did, and seeing it to be of the purest gold, must have melted down one half for the sake of what it might be worth, and of the other made this which is like a barber’s basin, as thou sayest; but be it as it may, to me who recognize it, its transformation makes no difference, for I will set it to rights at the first village where there is a blacksmith, and in such style that that helmet the god of smithies[446-4] forged for the god of battles shall not surpass it or even come up to it; and in the meantime I will wear it as well as I can, for something is better than nothing; all the more as it will be quite enough to protect me from any chance blow of a stone.”
“Will your worship,” said Sancho, “tell me what are we to do with this dapple-gray steed that looks like a gray ass, which that Martino[446-5] that your worship overthrew has left deserted here? for, from the way he took to his heels and bolted, he is not likely ever to come back for it; and by my beard but the gray is a good one.”
“I have never been in the habit,” said Don Quixote, “of taking spoil of those whom I vanquish, nor is it the practice of chivalry to take away their horses and leave them to go on foot, unless indeed it be that the victor have lost his own in the combat, in which case it is lawful to take that of the vanquished as a thing won in lawful war; therefore, Sancho, leave this horse, or ass, or whatever thou wilt have it to be; for when its owner sees us gone hence he will come back for it.”
“God knows I should like to take it,” returned Sancho, “or at least to change it for my own, which does not seem to me as good a one; verily the laws of chivalry are strict, since they cannot be stretched to let one ass be changed for another; I should like to know if I might at least change trappings.”
“On that head I am not quite certain,” answered Don Quixote, “and the matter being doubtful, pending better information, I say thou mayest change them, if so be thou hast urgent need of them.”
“So urgent is it,” answered Sancho, “that if they were for my own person I could not want them more;” and forthwith, fortified by this license, he effected the change, and rigged out his beast to the ninety-nines, making quite another thing of it. This done, they broke their fast on the remains of the spoils of war plundered from the sumpter mule, and drank of the brook that flowed from the fulling mills, without casting a look in that direction, in such loathing did they hold them for the alarm they had caused them; and, all anger and gloom removed, they mounted and, without taking any fixed road (not to fix upon any being the proper thing for true knights-errant), they set out, guided by Rocinante’s will, which carried along with it that of his master, not to say that of the ass, which always followed him wherever he led, lovingly and sociably; nevertheless they returned to the high road, and pursued it at a venture without any other aim.