Free Don Quixote [Trans. by Edith Grossman] by Miguel de Cervantes Page B

could, removed the breastplate and backpiece to see if he was wounded but did not see blood or cuts of any kind. He managed to lift him from the ground and with a good deal of effort put him on his own donkey, because he thought it a steadier mount. He gathered up his arms, even the broken pieces of the lance, and tied them on Rocinante, and leading the horse by the reins and the jackass by the halter, he began to walk toward his village, very dispirited at hearing the nonsense that Don Quixote was saying; Don Quixote was no less dispirited, for he was so beaten and broken that he could barely keep his seat on the burro, and from time to time he would raise his sighs to heaven, which obliged the farmer to ask him again to tell him what was wrong; one cannot help but think that the devil made Don Quixote recall stories suited to the events that had occurred, because at that point, forgetting about Valdovinos, he remembered the Moor Abindarráez, when the governor of Antequera, Rodrigo de Narváez, captured him and brought him back to his domain as his prisoner. 2 So when the farmer asked him again how he felt and what was wrong, he answered with the same words and phrases that the captivescion of the Abencerraje family said to Rodrigo de Narváez, just as he had read them in the history of Diana , by Jorge de Montemayor, where they are written, and he did this so deliberately that as the farmer walked along he despaired at hearing such an enormous amount of foolishness; in this way he realized that his neighbor was mad, and he hurried to reach the village in order to rid himself of the impatience Don Quixote provoked in him with his long-winded harangue. When it was concluded, Don Quixote went on to say:
    “Your grace should know, Don Rodrigo de Narváez, that this beautiful Jarifa I have mentioned to you is now the lovely Dulcinea of Toboso, for whose sake I have performed, perform now, and shall perform in the future the most famous feats of chivalry the world has seen, sees now, and will ever see.”
    To this the farmer replied:
    “Look, your grace, poor sinner that I am, I’m not Don Rodrigo de Narváez or the Marquis of Mantua, but Pedro Alonso, your neighbor, and your grace isn’t Valdovinos or Abindarráez, but an honorable gentleman, Señor Quijana.”
    “I know who I am,” replied Don Quixote, “and I know I can be not only those I have mentioned but the Twelve Peers of France 3 as well, and even all the nine paragons of Fame, 4 for my deeds will surpass all those they performed, together or singly.”
    Having these exchanges and others like them, they reached the village as night was falling, but the farmer waited until it grew a little darker, so that no one would see what a poor knight the beaten gentleman was. When he thought the right time had come, he entered the village and came to Don Quixote’s house, which was in an uproar; the priest and barber, who were great friends of Don Quixote, were there, and in a loud voice his housekeeper was saying to them:
    “What does your grace think, Señor Licentiate Pero Pérez”—for this was the priest’s name—“of my master’s misfortune? Three days and no sign of him, or his horse, or his shield, or his lance, or his armor. Woe is me! Now I know, and it’s as true as the death I owe God, that those accursed books of chivalry he’s always reading have driven him crazy; and now I remember hearing him say time and time again, when he was talking tohimself, that he wanted to become a knight errant and go out in the wide world in search of adventures. Those books should go straight to Satan and Barrabas, for they have ruined the finest mind in all of La Mancha.”
    His niece said the same and even added:
    “You should know, Master Nicolás”—for this was the name of the barber—“that it often happened that my dear uncle would read these cruel books of adventures for two days and nights without stopping, and when he was finished he would toss away the