Which treats of the condition and way of life of the famous gentleman, Don Quixote of La Mancha.
In a certain village of La Mancha, whose name I will not recall, there lived not long ago a gentleman—one of those who keep a lance in the rack, an ancient target, a lean hackney, and a greyhound for coursing. A mess of somewhat more beef than mutton, a salad on most nights, a hotch-potch on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, with the addition of a pigeon on Sundays, consumed three parts of his substance. The rest of it was spent in a doublet of fine broadcloth, a pair of velvet breeches for holidays, with slippers of the same, and his home-spun of the finest, with which he decked himself on week-days. He kept at home a housekeeper, who was past forty, and a niece who had not yet reached twenty, besides a lad for the field and market, who saddled the nag and handled the pruning-hook.
The age of our gentleman bordered upon fifty years. He was of a vigorous constitution, spare of flesh, dry of visage, a great early riser, and a lover of the chase. They affirm that his surname was Quejada, or Quesada (and in this there is some variance among the authors who treat of the matter), although by very probable conjectures we are led to conclude that he was called Quijana. But this is of small import to our story; enough that in the telling of it we swerve not a jot from the truth.
Be it known, then, that this gentleman above mentioned, during the interval that he was idle, which was the greater part of the year, gave himself up to the reading of books of chivalries, with so much fervour and relish, that he almost entirely neglected the exercise of the chase and even the management of his estate. And to such a pitch did his curiosity and infatuation reach, that he sold many acres of arable land in order to buy romances of chivalry to read; and so he brought home as many of them as he could procure. And of all none seemed to him so good as those composed by the famous Feliciano de Silva, for their brilliancy of style and those entangled sentences seemed to him to be very pearls; and especially when he came to read of the passages of love, and cartels of defiance, wherein he often found written things like these: “The reason of the unreason which is done to my reason in such wise my reason debilitates, that with reason I complain of your beauteousness.” And also when he read: “The lofty heavens which of your divinity do divinely fortify you with the constellations, and make you deserver of the deserts which your mightiness deserves.”
Over these reasons our poor gentleman lost his senses, and he used to keep awake at night in trying to comprehend them, and in plucking out their meaning, which not Aristotle himself could extract or understand, were he to come to life for that special purpose. He did not much fancy the wounds which Don Belianis gave and received; for he thought that, however potent were the masters who had healed him, the Knight could not but have his face and all his body full of scars and marks. Nevertheless, he praised in the author the ending of his book with the promise of that interminable adventure, and ofttimes he was seized with a desire to take up the pen, and put a finish to it in good earnest, as is there purposed. And doubtless he would have done so—aye, and gone through with it—had not other greater and more lasting thoughts diverted his mind.
Many times he held dispute with the Priest of his village (who was a learned man, a graduate of Siguenza) as to who should have been the better knight, Palmerin of England, or Amadis of Gaul; though Master Nicholas, the Barber of the same village, was used to say that none came up to the Knight of the Sun, and that if any one could compare with him it was Don Galaor, brother of Amadis of Gaul, for he had a very accommodating temper for everything; he was no prudish cavalier, nor such a sniveller as his brother, nor in the article of valour any behind him.
In fine, our gentleman was so absorbed in these studies, that he passed his nights reading from eve to dawn, and his days from dark to dusk; and so with little sleep and much study his brain dried up, to the end that he lost his wits. He filled himself with the imagination of all that he read in the books: with enchantments, with quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds, amorous plaints, loves, torments, and follies impossible. And so assured was he of the truth of all that mass of fantastic inventions of which he read, that for him there was no other history in the world so certain. He would say that the Cid Ruy Diaz must have been a good knight, but not to be named with the Knight of the Flaming Sword, who only with one back-stroke had severed two fierce and monstrous giants through the middle. He better liked Bernardo del Carpio, because at Roncesvalles he had slain Orlando the Enchanted, availing himself of Hercules’ trick when he throttled Anteus, son of Terra, in his arms. He spoke very well of the giant Morgante; for, though of that gigantesque brood who are all arrogant and uncivil, he alone was affable and well-mannered. But, above all, he esteemed Rinaldo of Montalvan, especially when he saw him sally from his castle and rob all he met, and when in Heathenrie he stole that idol of Mahound, which was all of gold, as his history tells. As for the traitor Galalon, for a volley of kicks at him he would have given his housekeeper—aye, and his niece to boot. In short, his wits utterly wrecked, he fell into the strangest delusion ever madman conceived in the world, and this was, that it was fitting and necessary for him, as he thought, both for the augmenting of his honour and the service of the State, to make himself a Knight Errant, and travel through the world with his armour and his horse seeking for adventures, and to exercise himself in all that he had read that the Knight Errant practised, redressing all kinds of wrong, and placing himself in perils and passes by the surmounting of which he might achieve an everlasting name and fame. Already the poor man imagined himself, by the valour of his arm, crowned with, at the least, the Empire of Trebizond. And so, with these imaginations so delightful, rapt in the strange zest with which they inspired him, he made haste to give effect to what he desired. The first thing he did was to furbish up some armour which had belonged to his great-grandfathers, which, eaten with rust and covered with mould, had lain for ages, where it had been put away and forgotten, in a corner. He scoured and dressed it as well as he was able, but he saw that it had one great defect, which was that there was no covered helmet, but only a simple morion or, headpiece. This his ingenuity supplied, for, with pieces of pasteboard, he fashioned a sort of half-beaver, which, fitted to the morion, gave it the appearance of a complete helmet. The fact is that, to prove it to be strong and able to stand the chance of a sword-cut, he drew his sword and gave it a couple of strokes, demolishing with the very first in a moment what had cost him a week to make. The ease with which he had knocked it to pieces not seeming to him good, in order to secure himself against this danger he set to making it anew, fitting some bars of iron within in such a manner as to leave him satisfied with his defence; and without caring to make a fresh trial of it, he constituted and accepted it for a very perfect good helmet. He went then to inspect his nag, a beast which, though it had more quarters than there are in a real, and more blemishes than the horse of Gonela, who, tantum pellis et ossa fuit, appeared to him to surpass Alexander’s Bucephalus and the Ci Bavieca. Four days were spent by our gentlemen in meditating on what name to give him; for, as he said to himself, it was not right that the steed of Knight so famous, and in himself so good, should be without a recognised appellation; and therefore he endeavoured to fit him with one which should signify what he had been prior to his belonging to a Knight Errant, and what he was then; since he thought it but right that, the master having changed his condition, the horse should also change his name, and get him one sublime and high-sounding, as befitted the new order and the new office which he professed. And so, after many names which he devised, effaced, and rejected, amended, re-made and un-made in his mind and fancy, finally he decided to call him Rozinante—a name, in his opinion, lofty, sonorous, and significative of what his animal had been when he was a common hackney, before he became what he now was, before, and in front of, all the hackneys in the world.
Having given to his horse a name so much to his liking, he then desired to give one to himself, and the thinking of this cost him eight other days. At last he decided to call himself Don Quixote; whereupon the authors of this truthful history, as has been said, have found occasion to affirm that his name was Quijada, and not Quesada, as others would have it. Then recollecting that the valorous Amadis was not contented with calling himself simply Amadis, but added the name of his kingdom and native country, to make it famous, taking the name of Amadis of Gaul, so he desired, like a good knight, to add to his own the name of his native land, and call himself Don Quixote of La Mancha, whereby, to his seeming, he made lively proclamation of his lineage and his country, and honoured it by taking his surname therefrom.
His armour then being cleaned, his morion manufactured into a helmet, a name given to his horse, and himself confirmed with a new one, it struck him that he lacked nothing else than to look for a lady of whom to be enamoured; for the Knight Errant without amours was a tree without leaves and without fruit, and a body without soul. He would say to himself: “Were I, for my sins, or through good luck, to encounter hereabouts some giant, as usually happens to Knights Errant, and to overthrow him at the onset, or cleave him through the middle of his body, or, in fine, vanquish him and make him surrender, would it not be well to have some one to whom to send him as a present, that he might enter and bend the knee before my sweet mistress, and say with humble and subdued voice: ‘I, lady, am the giant Caraculiambro, lord of the island of Malindramia, whom the never-to-be-praised-as-he-deserves Knight, Don Quixote of La Mancha, vanquished in single combat—he who hath commanded me to present myself before your grace that your highness may dispose of me at your pleasure.’”
Oh, how our good knight was pleased with himself when he had delivered this speech!—and the more when he found one to whom to give the name of his lady. It happened, as the belief is, that in a village near his own there was a well-looking peasant girl, with whom he had once fallen in love, though it is understood that she never knew it or had proof thereof. Her name was Aldonza Lorenzo, and upon her he judged it fit to bestow the title of mistress of his fancy; and, seeking for her a name which should not much belie her own, and yet incline and approach to that of a princess or great lady, he decided to call her Dulcinea del Toboso, for she was a native of El Toboso—a name, in his opinion, musical, romantic, and significant, as were all which he had given to himself and his belongings.