With this reflection Sancho made his mind easy, counting the business as good as settled, and stayed there till the afternoon so as to make Don Quixote think he had time enough to go to El Toboso and return; and things turned out so luckily for him that as he got up to mount Dapple, he spied, coming from El Toboso towards the spot where he stood, three peasant girls on three colts, or fillies – for the author does not make the point clear, though it is more likely they were she-asses, the usual mount with village girls; but as it is of no great consequence, we need not stop to prove it.
To be brief, the instant Sancho saw the peasant girls, he returned full speed to seek his master, and found him sighing and uttering a thousand passionate lamentations. When Don Quixote saw him he exclaimed, “What news, Sancho, my friend? Am I to mark this day with a white stone or a black?”
“Your worship,” replied Sancho, “had better mark it with ruddle, like the inscriptions on the walls of class rooms, that those who see it may see it plain.”
“Then thou bringest good news,” said Don Quixote.
“So good,” replied Sancho, “that your worship has only to spur Rocinante and get out into the open field to see the lady Dulcinea del Toboso, who, with two others, damsels of hers, is coming to see your worship.”
“Holy God! what art thou saying, Sancho, my friend?” exclaimed Don Quixote. “Take care thou art not deceiving me, or seeking by false joy to cheer my real sadness.”
“What could I get by deceiving your worship,” returned Sancho, “especially when it will so soon be shown whether I tell the truth or not? Come, senor, push on, and you will see the princess our mistress coming, robed and adorned – in fact, like what she is. Her damsels and she are all one glow of gold, all bunches of pearls, all diamonds, all rubies, all cloth of brocade of more than ten borders; with their hair loose on their shoulders like so many sunbeams playing with the wind; and moreover, they come mounted on three piebald cackneys, the finest sight ever you saw.”
“Hackneys, you mean, Sancho,” said Don Quixote.
“There is not much difference between cackneys and hackneys,” said Sancho; “but no matter what they come on, there they are, the finest ladies one could wish for, especially my lady the princess Dulcinea, who staggers one’s senses.”
“Let us go, Sancho, my son,” said Don Quixote, “and in guerdon of this news, as unexpected as it is good, I bestow upon thee the best spoil I shall win in the first adventure I may have; or if that does not satisfy thee, I promise thee the foals I shall have this year from my three mares that thou knowest are in foal on our village common.”
“I’ll take the foals,” said Sancho; “for it is not quite certain that the spoils of the first adventure will be good ones.”
By this time they had cleared the wood, and saw the three village lasses close at hand. Don Quixote looked all along the road to El Toboso, and as he could see nobody except the three peasant girls, he was completely puzzled, and asked Sancho if it was outside the city he had left them.
“How outside the city?” returned Sancho. “Are your worship’s eyes in the back of your head, that you can’t see that they are these who are coming here, shining like the very sun at noonday?”
“I see nothing, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “but three country girls on three jackasses.”
“Now, may God deliver me from the devil!” said Sancho, “and can it be that your worship takes three hackneys – or whatever they’re called – as white as the driven snow, for jackasses? By the Lord, I could tear my beard if that was the case!”
“Well, I can only say, Sancho, my friend,” said Don Quixote, “that it is as plain they are jackasses – or jennyasses – as that I am Don Quixote, and thou Sancho Panza: at any rate, they seem to me to be so.”
“Hush, senor,” said Sancho, “don’t talk that way, but open your eyes, and come and pay your respects to the lady of your thoughts, who is close upon us now;” and with these words he advanced to receive the three village lasses, and dismounting from Dapple, caught hold of one of the asses of the three country girls by the halter, and dropping on both knees on the ground, he said, “Queen and princess and duchess of beauty, may it please your haughtiness and greatness to receive into your favour and good-will your captive knight who stands there turned into marble stone, and quite stupefied and benumbed at finding himself in your magnificent presence. I am Sancho Panza, his squire, and he the vagabond knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, otherwise called ‘The Knight of the Rueful Countenance.’”
Don Quixote had by this time placed himself on his knees beside Sancho, and, with eyes starting out of his head and a puzzled gaze, was regarding her whom Sancho called queen and lady; and as he could see nothing in her except a village lass, and not a very well-favoured one, for she was platter-faced and snub-nosed, he was perplexed and bewildered, and did not venture to open his lips. The country girls, at the same time, were astonished to see these two men, so different in appearance, on their knees, preventing their companion from going on. She, however, who had been stopped, breaking silence, said angrily and testily, “Get out of the way, bad luck to you, and let us pass, for we are in a hurry.”
To which Sancho returned, “Oh, princess and universal lady of El Toboso, is not your magnanimous heart softened by seeing the pillar and prop of knight-errantry on his knees before your sublimated presence?”
On hearing this, one of the others exclaimed, “Woa then! why, I’m rubbing thee down, she-ass of my father-in-law! See how the lordlings come to make game of the village girls now, as if we here could not chaff as well as themselves. Go your own way, and let us go ours, and it will be better for you.”
“Get up, Sancho,” said Don Quixote at this; “I see that fortune, ‘with evil done to me unsated still,’ has taken possession of all the roads by which any comfort may reach ‘this wretched soul’ that I carry in my flesh. And thou, highest perfection of excellence that can be desired, utmost limit of grace in human shape, sole relief of this afflicted heart that adores thee, though the malign enchanter that persecutes me has brought clouds and cataracts on my eyes, and to them, and them only, transformed thy unparagoned beauty and changed thy features into those of a poor peasant girl, if so be he has not at the same time changed mine into those of some monster to render them loathsome in thy sight, refuse not to look upon me with tenderness and love; seeing in this submission that I make on my knees to thy transformed beauty the humility with which my soul adores thee.”
“Hey-day! My grandfather!” cried the girl, “much I care for your love-making! Get out of the way and let us pass, and we’ll thank you.”
Sancho stood aside and let her go, very well pleased to have got so well out of the hobble he was in. The instant the village lass who had done duty for Dulcinea found herself free, prodding her “cackney” with a spike she had at the end of a stick, she set off at full speed across the field. The she-ass, however, feeling the point more acutely than usual, began cutting such capers, that it flung the lady Dulcinea to the ground; seeing which, Don Quixote ran to raise her up, and Sancho to fix and girth the pack-saddle, which also had slipped under the ass’s belly. The pack-saddle being secured, as Don Quixote was about to lift up his enchanted mistress in his arms and put her upon her beast, the lady, getting up from the ground, saved him the trouble, for, going back a little, she took a short run, and putting both hands on the croup of the ass she dropped into the saddle more lightly than a falcon, and sat astride like a man, whereat Sancho said, “Rogue! but our lady is lighter than a lanner, and might teach the cleverest Cordovan or Mexican how to mount; she cleared the back of the saddle in one jump, and without spurs she is making the hackney go like a zebra; and her damsels are no way behind her, for they all fly like the wind;” which was the truth, for as soon as they saw Dulcinea mounted, they pushed on after her, and sped away without looking back, for more than half a league.
Don Quixote followed them with his eyes, and when they were no longer