CHAPTER 8
WHEREIN IS RELATED WHAT BEFELL DON QUIXOTE ON HIS WAY TO SEE HIS LADY
DULCINEA DEL TOBOSO
“Blessed be Allah the all-powerful!” says Hamete Benengeli on begin-
ning this eighth chapter; “blessed be Allah!” he repeats three times; and he
says he utters these thanksgivings at seeing that he has now got Don
Quixote and Sancho fairly afield, and that the readers of his delightful histo-
ry may reckon that the achievements and humours of Don Quixote and his
squire are now about to begin; and he urges them to forget the former
chivalries of the ingenious gentleman and to fix their eyes on those that are
to come, which now begin on the road to El Toboso, as the others began on
the plains of Montiel; nor is it much that he asks in consideration of all he
promises, and so he goes on to say:
Don Quixote and Sancho were left alone, and the moment Samson took
his departure, Rocinante began to neigh, and Dapple to sigh, which, by both
knight and squire, was accepted as a good sign and a very happy omen;
though, if the truth is to be told, the sighs and brays of Dapple were louder
than the neighings of the hack, from which Sancho inferred that his good
fortune was to exceed and overtop that of his master, building, perhaps,
upon some judicial astrology that he may have known, though the history
says nothing about it; all that can be said is, that when he stumbled or fell,
he was heard to say he wished he had not come out, for by stumbling or
falling there was nothing to be got but a damaged shoe or a broken rib; and,
fool as he was, he was not much astray in this.
Said Don Quixote, “Sancho, my friend, night is drawing on upon us as
we go, and more darkly than will allow us to reach El Toboso by daylight;
for there I am resolved to go before I engage in another adventure, and there
I shall obtain the blessing and generous permission of the peerless Dul-
cinea, with which permission I expect and feel assured that I shall conclude
and bring to a happy termination every perilous adventure; for nothing in
life makes knights-errant more valorous than finding themselves favoured
by their ladies.”
“So I believe,” replied Sancho; “but I think it will be difficult for your
worship to speak with her or see her, at any rate where you will be able to
receive her blessing; unless, indeed, she throws it over the wall of the yard
where I saw her the time before, when I took her the letter that told of the
follies and mad things your worship was doing in the heart of Sierra
Morena.”
“Didst thou take that for a yard wall, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “where
or at which thou sawest that never sufficiently extolled grace and beauty? It
must have been the gallery, corridor, or portico of some rich and royal
palace.”
“It might have been all that,” returned Sancho, “but to me it looked like a
wall, unless I am short of memory.”
“At all events, let us go there, Sancho,” said Don Quixote; “for, so that I
see her, it is the same to me whether it be over a wall, or at a window, or
through the chink of a door, or the grate of a garden; for any beam of the
sun of her beauty that reaches my eyes will give light to my reason and
strength to my heart, so that I shall be unmatched and unequalled in wisdom
and valour.”
“Well, to tell the truth, senor,” said Sancho, “when I saw that sun of the
lady Dulcinea del Toboso, it was not bright enough to throw out beams at
all; it must have been, that as her grace was sifting that wheat I told you of,
the thick dust she raised came before her face like a cloud and dimmed it.”
“What! dost thou still persist, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “in saying,
thinking, believing, and maintaining that my lady Dulcinea was sifting
wheat, that being an occupation and task entirely at variance with what is
and should be the employment of persons of distinction, who are constitut-
ed and reserved for other avocations and pursuits that show their rank a
bowshot off? Thou hast forgotten, O Sancho, those lines of our poet where-
in he paints for us how, in their crystal abodes, those four nymphs employed
themselves who rose from their loved Tagus and seated themselves in a ver-
dant meadow to embroider those tissues which the ingenious poet there de-
scribes to us, how they were worked and woven with gold and silk and
pearls; and something of this sort must have been the employment of my
lady when thou sawest her, only that the spite which some wicked enchanter
seems to have against everything of mine changes all those things that give
me pleasure, and turns them into shapes unlike their own; and so I fear that
in that history of my achievements which they say is now in print, if haply
its author was some sage who is an enemy of mine, he will have put one
thing for another, mingling a thousand lies with one truth, and amusing
himself by relating transactions which have nothing to do with the sequence
of a true history. O envy, root of all countless evils, and cankerworm of the
virtues! All the vices, Sancho, bring some kind of pleasure with them; but
envy brings nothing but irritation, bitterness, and rage.”
“So I say too,” replied Sancho; “and I suspect in that legend or history of
us that the bachelor Samson Carrasco told us he saw, my honour goes
dragged in the dirt, knocked about, up and down, sweeping the streets, as
they say. And yet, on the faith of an honest man, I never spoke ill of any en-
chanter, and I am not so well off that I am to be envied; to be sure, I am
rather sly, and I have a certain spice of the rogue in me; but all is covered by
the great cloak of my simplicity, always natural and never acted; and if I
had no other merit save that I believe, as I always do, firmly and truly in
God, and all the holy Roman Catholic Church holds and believes, and that I
am a mortal enemy of the Jews, the historians ought to have mercy on me
and treat me well in their writings. But let them say what they like; naked
was I born, naked I find myself, I neither lose nor gain; nay, while I see my-
self put into a book and passed on from hand to hand over the world, I don’t
care a fig, let them say what they like of me.”
“That, Sancho,” returned Don Quixote, “reminds me of what happened to
a famous poet of our own day, who, having written a bitter satire against all
the courtesan ladies, did not insert or name in it a certain lady of whom it
was questionable whether she was one or not. She, seeing she was not in the
list of the poet, asked him what he had seen in her that he did not include
her in the number of the others, telling him he must add to his satire and put
her in the new part, or else look out for the consequences. The poet did as
she bade him, and left her without a shred of reputation, and she was satis-
fied by getting fame though it was infamy. In keeping with this is what they
relate of that shepherd who set fire to the famous temple of Diana, by repute
one of the seven wonders of the world, and burned it with the sole object of
making his name live in after ages; and, though it was forbidden to name
him, or mention his name by word of mouth or in writing, lest the object of
his ambition should be attained, nevertheless it became known that he was
called Erostratus. And something of the same sort is what happened in the
case of the great emperor Charles V and a gentleman in Rome. The emperor
was anxious to see that famous temple of the Rotunda, called in ancient
times the temple ‘of all the gods,’ but now-a-days, by a better nomenclature,
‘of all the saints,’ which is the best preserved building of all those of pagan
construction in Rome, and the one which best sustains the reputation of
mighty works and magnificence of its founders. It is in the form of a half
orange, of enormous dimensions, and well lighted, though no light pene-
trates it save that which is admitted by a window, or rather round skylight,
at the top; and it was from this that the emperor examined the building. A
Roman gentleman stood by his side and explained to him the skilful con-
struction and ingenuity of the vast fabric and its wonderful architecture, and
when they had left the skylight he said to the emperor, ‘A thousand times,
your Sacred Majesty, the impulse came upon me to seize your Majesty in
my arms and fling myself down from yonder skylight, so as to leave behind
me in the world a name that would last for ever.’ ‘I am thankful to you for
not carrying such an evil thought into effect,’ said the emperor, ‘and I shall
give you no opportunity in future of again putting your loyalty to the test;
and I therefore forbid you ever to speak to me or to be where I am; and he
followed up these words by bestowing a liberal bounty upon him. My
meaning is, Sancho, that the desire of acquiring fame is a very powerful
motive. What, thinkest thou, was it that flung Horatius in full armour down
from the bridge into the depths of the Tiber? What burned the hand and arm
of Mutius? What impelled Curtius to plunge into the deep burning gulf that
opened in the midst of Rome? What, in opposition to all the omens that de-
clared against him, made Julius Caesar cross the Rubicon? And to come to
more modern examples, what scuttled the ships, and left stranded and cut
off the gallant Spaniards under the command of the most courteous Cortes
in the New World? All these and a variety of other great exploits are, were
and will be, the work of fame that mortals desire as a reward and a portion
of the immortality their famous deeds deserve; though we Catholic Chris-
tians and knights-errant look more to that future glory that is everlasting in
the ethereal regions of heaven than to the vanity of the fame that is to be ac-
quired in this present transitory life; a fame that, however long it may last,
must after all end with the world itself, which has its own appointed end. So
that, O Sancho, in what we do we must not overpass the bounds which the
Christian religion we profess has assigned to us. We have to slay pride in
giants, envy by generosity and nobleness of heart, anger by calmness of de-
meanour and equanimity, gluttony and sloth by the spareness of our diet and
the length of our vigils, lust and lewdness by the loyalty we preserve to
those whom we have made the mistresses of our thoughts, indolence by tra-
versing the world in all directions seeking opportunities of making our-
selves, besides Christians, famous knights. Such, Sancho, are the means by
which we reach those extremes of praise that fair fame carries with it.”
“All that your worship has said so far,” said Sancho, “I have understood
quite well; but still I would be glad if your worship would dissolve a doubt
for me, which has just this minute come into my mind.”
“Solve, thou meanest, Sancho,” said Don Quixote; “say on, in God’s
name, and I will answer as well as I can.”
“Tell me, senor,” Sancho went on to say, “those Julys or Augusts, and all
those venturous knights that you say are now dead—where are they now?”
“The heathens,” replied Don Quixote, “are, no doubt, in hell; the Chris-
tians, if they were good Christians, are either in purgatory or in heaven.”
“Very good,” said Sancho; “but now I want to know—the tombs where
the bodies of those great lords are, have they silver lamps before them, or
are the walls of their chapels ornamented with crutches, winding-sheets,
tresses of hair, legs and eyes in wax? Or what are they ornamented with?”
To which Don Quixote made answer: “The tombs of the heathens were
generally sumptuous temples; the ashes of Julius Caesar’s body were placed
on the top of a stone pyramid of vast size, which they now call in Rome
Saint Peter’s needle. The emperor Hadrian had for a tomb a castle as large
as a good-sized village, which they called the Moles Adriani, and is now the
castle of St. Angelo in Rome. The queen Artemisia buried her husband
Mausolus in a tomb which was reckoned one of the seven wonders of the
world; but none of these tombs, or of the many others of the heathens, were
ornamented with winding-sheets or any of those other offerings and tokens
that show that they who are buried there are saints.”
“That’s the point I’m coming to,” said Sancho; “and now tell me, which is
the greater work, to bring a dead man to life or to kill a giant?”
“The answer is easy,” replied Don Quixote; “it is a greater work to bring
to life a dead man.”
“Now I have got you,” said Sancho; “in that case the fame of them who
bring the dead to life, who give sight to the blind, cure cripples, restore
health to the sick, and before whose tombs there are lamps burning, and
whose chapels are filled with devout folk on their knees adoring their relics
be a better fame in this life and in the other than that which all the heathen
emperors and knights-errant that have ever been in the world have left or
may leave behind them?”
“That I grant, too,” said Don Quixote.
“Then this fame, these favours, these privileges, or whatever you call it,”
said Sancho, “belong to the bodies and relics of the saints who, with the ap-
probation and permission of our holy mother Church, have lamps, tapers,
winding-sheets, crutches, pictures, eyes and legs, by means of which they
increase devotion and add to their own Christian reputation. Kings carry the
bodies or relics of saints on their shoulders, and kiss bits of their bones, and
enrich and adorn their oratories and favourite altars with them.”
“What wouldst thou have me infer from all thou hast said, Sancho?”
asked Don Quixote.
“My meaning is,” said Sancho, “let us set about becoming saints, and we
shall obtain more quickly the fair fame we are striving after; for you know,
senor, yesterday or the day before yesterday (for it is so lately one may say
so) they canonised and beatified two little barefoot friars, and it is now
reckoned the greatest good luck to kiss or touch the iron chains with which
they girt and tortured their bodies, and they are held in greater veneration,
so it is said, than the sword of Roland in the armoury of our lord the King,
whom God preserve. So that, senor, it is better to be an humble little friar of
no matter what order, than a valiant knight-errant; with God a couple of
dozen of penance lashings are of more avail than two thousand lance-
thrusts, be they given to giants, or monsters, or dragons.”
“All that is true,” returned Don Quixote, “but we cannot all be friars, and
many are the ways by which God takes his own to heaven; chivalry is a reli-
gion, there are sainted knights in glory.”
“Yes,” said Sancho, “but I have heard say that there are more friars in
heaven than knights-errant.”
“That,” said Don Quixote, “is because those in religious orders are more
numerous than knights.”
“The errants are many,” said Sancho.
“Many,” replied Don Quixote, “but few they who deserve the name of
knights.”
With these, and other discussions of the same sort, they passed that night
and the following day, without anything worth mention happening to them,
whereat Don Quixote was not a little dejected; but at length the next day, at
daybreak, they descried the great city of El Toboso, at the sight of which
Don Quixote’s spirits rose and Sancho’s fell, for he did not know Dulcinea’s
house, nor in all his life had he ever seen her, any more than his master; so
that they were both uneasy, the one to see her, the other at not having seen
her, and Sancho was at a loss to know what he was to do when his master
sent him to El Toboso. In the end, Don Quixote made up his mind to enter
the city at nightfall, and they waited until the time came among some oak
trees that were near El Toboso; and when the moment they had agreed upon
arrived, they made their entrance into the city, where something happened
them that may fairly be called something.
