Selections from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

Author:Miguel de Cervantes [Saavedra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2008-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

“Your honor will be readily satisfied,” the graduate replied; “and so, your honor should know that, even though I said before I was a graduate, I’m only a bachelor, and my name is Alonso López. I was born in Alcobendas. I’m now coming from the city of Baeza with eleven other priests, the men who ran away with the torches. We’re on our way to the city of Segovia, escorting a corpse which is on that litter. It’s the body of a knight who died in Baeza, where he was originally buried. Now, as I say, we were taking his bones to their final resting place, which is in Segovia, where he was born.”

“And who killed him?” asked Don Quixote.

“God, by means of a plague fever that attacked him,” the bachelor replied.

“Thus, said Don Quixote, “our Lord has relieved me of the labor I was to undertake to avenge his death, in case anyone else had killed him. But since his killer is Who He is, I have only to keep silent and shrug my shoulders, because I would do the same if He were killing me myself. And I wish your reverence to know that I am a knight of La Mancha, named Don Quixote, and my duty and practice is to travel the world making the crooked straight and redressing injuries.”

“I don’t know how that is about making the crooked straight,” said the bachelor, “but you’ve turned me from straight to crooked, leaving me with a broken leg, which will never be straight again as long as I live. And the injury you’ve redressed for me has been to leave me so badly injured that I’ll remain injured forever. It was quite a misadventure to run into you while you were in quest of adventures.”

“Not all things,” replied Don Quixote, “happen in the same way. The harm lay, sir bachelor Alonso López, in your coming at night, dressed in those surplices, with flaming torches, praying, clad in mourning, and looking exactly like evil things from the other world. And so I couldn’t avoid doing my duty by attacking you; I would have attacked you even if I had known for a certainty that you were the very Satans of hell, which I took you for and considered you to be the whole time.”

“Now that my fate has so willed it,” said the bachelor, “I beseech your honor, sir knight-errant (who have done me such a bad errand), help me get out from under this mule, who’s got my leg jammed between the stirrup and the saddle.”

“Now you tell me!” exclaimed Don Quixote. “When were you waiting for to tell me your distress?”

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