CHAPTER I.
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.
WHICH TREATS OF THE CHARACTER AND PURSUITS OF THE FAMOUS
GENTLEMAN DON QUIXOTE OF LA MANCHA