Chap. XVII Of the Most Singular and Strangest Adventure That Happened to Don Quixote in the Whole Course of This Sublime History
The horsemen alighting, with the assistance of those who were on foot, snatched up the bodies of Don Quixote and Sancho, and carried them hastily into the court of the castle, round which above a hundred flaming torches were placed, and the corridores of the court were illuminated by five hundred tapers, shining with such a blaze, that, in spite of the night, which was dark, there was no want of the day. In the middle of the court appeared a monument raised about two yards from the ground, and covered with a spacious canopy of black velvet; and, upon the steps that led up to it, above a hundred tapers of virgin wax stood burning in silver candlesticks. On the tomb lay the body of a young damsel, whose beauty was such as rendered death itself beautiful; her head was raised on a cushion of brocade, and crowned with a garland of various odoriferous flowers; and in her hands, that were crossed upon her breast, appeared a bough of green victorious palm. On one side of the court was erected a theatre, on which were seated two personages, whom their crowns and sceptres declared to be either real or fictitious kings; and hard by the theatre, which was furnished with steps, two other chairs, upon which Don Quixote and Sancho were seated by their captors, who still maintained their former silence, the observance of which they likewise recommended, by signs, to our hero and his squire; though these injunctions were altogether superfluous; for their astonishment at what they saw, had effectually tied their tongues; and, indeed, how could they help being astonished at sight of this apparatus! considering, too, that by this time the knight had discovered the dead body on the tomb to be no other than the beauteous Altisidora? At this juncture, two noble personages, with a numerous retinue, ascended the theatre, and seated themselves in magnificent chairs, hard by the figures that were crowned; then Don Quixote and Sancho, perceiving the new comers to be their former entertainers, the duke and duchess, rose up and bowed with great veneration, and their graces, rising also, returned the compliment with a slight inclination of the head. And now an officer crossing the court, and approaching Sancho, threw over him a robe of black buckram, painted all over with flames of fire; at the same time pulling off his cap, he put upon his head one of those pasteboard mitres which are worn by the penitents of the holy office; and in a whisper advised him to keep his lips fast sewed together, unless he had a mind to be gagged or put to death without mercy. Sancho surveyed himself from head to foot, and saw his robe in flames; but as they did not burn, he valued them not a farthing; then he took off his mitre, and perceiving it figured with pictures of fiends, set it on his head again, saying to himself, ‘As the flames do not burn, and the fiends do not fly away with me, I am very well satisfied.’ Don Quixote likewise surveyed the squire; and, although his reflection was still disturbed with fear and suspense, could not help smiling at the ludicrous figure.
Sancho being thus equipped, a low yet agreeable sound of flutes seemed to issue from beneath the tomb, and being uninterrupted by any human voice, for here silence itself kept silence, produced a very soft and pleasing melody. Then all of a sudden, a beautiful youth, in a Roman habit, appeared close by the cushion on which the seemingly dead body reposed, and to the sound of the harp on which he himself played, with a sweet harmonious voice he sung the two following stanzas—
I.
‘Till fair Altisidora, slain
By Quixote’s cruelty, return;
And all th’ inchanted female train
Her hapless fate in sack-cloth mourn;
Until duennas clad in baize
Appear in presence of her grace,
I’ll celebrate the nymph in lays
That would not shame the bard of Thrace.
II.
‘Nor shall thy beauty fade unsung,
When life forsakes my gelid veins;
My clay-cold lips and frozen tongue,
In death shall raise immortal strains.
My soul when freed from cumb’rous clay,
Her flight o’er Stygian waves shall take;
And while on Lethe’s banks I stray,
My song shall charm th’ oblivious lake.’
Here he was interrupted by one of the two pretended kings; who said—‘Enough, divine songster! it would be an infinite task to describe the death and beauties of the peerless Altisidora, not dead as the ignorant world imagines, but alive in the voice of fame, and in the penance which Sancho Panza here present must undergo, in order to restore her to the light she has lost; and therefore, O Rhadamanthus! who sittest with me in judgment, within the gloomy caverns of Lethe, as thou art intimately acquainted with all the determinations of the inscrutable fates, touching the revival of this damsel, relate and declare them without loss of time, that we may no longer delay that happiness which we expect from her recovery.’
Scarce had Minos pronounced these words, when his fellow-judge and companion Rhadamanthus stood up, saying—‘So ho! ye ministers of this house, high and low, great and small, come hither one by one, and mark the face, the arms, and loins of Sancho, with two dozen of tweaks, one dozen of pinches, and half a dozen pricks with a pin; for upon this execution depends the revival of Altisidora.’ Sancho Panza hearing this sentence, broke silence, and exclaimed aloud—‘I vow to God, I will sooner turn Turk, than allow my face to be marked or my flesh to be handled in any such manner. Body o’ me! what has the pinching of my face to do with the resurrection of that damsel. The old woman has got a liquorish tooth, forsooth, and she is still licking her fingers. Dulcinea is inchanted, and I must be scourged for the disinchantment of her ladyship: Altisidora is dead by the hand of God, and in order to bring her to life, I must suffer two dozen of tweaks, my body must be pinked into a sieve with large pins, and my arms pinched into all the colours of the rainbow! Such jokes may pass upon a brother-in-law; but I am an old dog, and will not be coaxed with a crust.’—‘Then thou shalt die,’ cried Rhadamanthus with an audible voice. ‘Tame that savage heart of thine, thou tyger; humble thyself, thou proud Nimrod! suffer and be silent. We ask not impossibilities, and therefore thou must not pretend to examine the difficulties of this affair: tweaked thou shalt be; pinked shalt thou find thyself, and pinched until thy groans declare thine anguish.—So ho! I say, ye ministers! execute my command, or by the faith of an honest man, you shall see for what you were born!’
In consequence of this summons, six duennas came walking through the court yard in procession, one by one, the four first with spectacles, and each with her right-arm raised, about four inches of the wrist being bared according to the present fashion, that the hand may seem the larger. Sancho no sooner beheld these matrons, than he began to bellow like a bull; exclaiming—‘I might have allowed myself to be handled by all the world besides, but that duennas should touch me I will by no means consent! they may cat-claw my face, as my master was served in this very castle; they may run me through the guts with daggers of steel; they may tear the flesh off my arms with red-hot pincers; all these tortures will I bear patiently, for the service of these noble persons: but I say again, the devil shall fly away with me before I suffer a duenna to lay a finger on my carcase!’ Then Don Quixote addressing himself to Sancho, broke silence in these terms—‘Exert thy patience, my son, for the satisfaction of these noble personages, and give thanks to Heaven, which hath indued thy person with such virtue, that by the martyrdom of thy flesh, the inchanted are delivered from inchantment, and even the dead revived.’
By this time the duennas had surrounded Sancho; who, being softened and persuaded, seated himself in a proper posture, and held out his face and beard to the first, who treated him with a well-planted twitch, and then dropped a profound curtsey. ‘Less courtesy, less anointing, good Madam Duenna,’ cried the squire; ‘for, by the Lord, your fingers smack of vinegar!’ In a word, he was tweaked by all the duennas, and pinched by a great number of other persons belonging to the family: but what he could by no means be brought to endure, was the puncture with pins, which they no sooner began to perform, than starting up in a rage, and seizing a lighted torch that stood near him, he assaulted the duennas, and all the rest of his executioners, crying—‘Avaunt, ye ministers of hell! I am not made of brass, to be insensible to such torture.’ At this instant, Altisidora, who must have been tired with lying so long upon her back, turned herself on one side; and this motion was no sooner perceived by the spectators, than all of them exclaimed, as if with one voice, ‘Altisidora moves! Altisidora lives!’ Then Rhadamanthus desired Sancho to lay aside his indignation, seeing the intended aim was already accomplished.
Don Quixote seeing Altisidora stirring, fell upon his knees before Sancho, saying—‘Now is the time, dear son of my bowels, and no longer my squire! now is the time to inflict upon thyself some of those lashes thou art obliged to undergo for the disinchantment of Dulcinea. This, I say, is the time, when thy virtue is seasoned, and of efficacy sufficient to perform the cure which we expect from thy compliance.’ To this apostrophe the squire replied—‘This is reel upon reel, and not honey upon pancakes; scourging, to be sure, is a very agreeable dessert to a dish of twitches, pinches, and pin-prickings. There is no more to be done, but to take and tie a great stone about my neck, and toss me into a well; it will be much better for me to die at once, than to be always the wedding-heifer, to remedy the misfortunes of other people: either let me live in peace! or, before God, all shall out, sell or not sell.’
By this time Altisidora sat upright on the tomb, and at that instant the waits beginning to play, were accompanied by the musick of flutes, and the voices of all the spectators, who acclaimed—‘Live Altisidora! Altisidora live!’ The duke and duchess, together with Minos and Rhadamanthus, rising from their seats, and being joined by Don Quixote and Sancho, went to receive this young lady, and help her in descending from the tomb; while, they were thus employed, she assumed a languid and fainting air, and inclining her head towards the duke and duchess and the two kings, darted a sidelong glance to Don Quixote, saying—‘God forgive thee, unrelenting knight! by thy cruelty I have been doomed to remain, as I believe, above a thousand years in the other world! but as for thee, thou most compassionate squire that this wide earth contains! I thank thee kindly for that life I now enjoy. From this day, friend Sancho, thou mayest command six of my shifts to be converted into shirts for thy own body; and if they are not quite whole, at least they are white and clean.’ Sancho thanked her for the present, with mitre in hand and knee on ground; and when the duke ordered his servants to take away those badges of disgrace, and restore his own cap and coat, the squire entreated his grace to let him keep the mitre and the flaming robe, and carry them to his own country, as a mark and memorial of this incredible, adventure. To this supplication the duchess replied, that he might keep these testimonials, for he knew how much she was his friend.
The duke ordered the court to be cleared, the company to retire to their several chambers, and the knight and squire to be conduced to the apartments which they had formerly occupied.