CHAPTER V.

OF THE SHREWD AND DROLL CONVERSATION THAT PASSED BETWEEN SANCHO PANZA AND
HIS WIFE TERESA PANZA, AND OTHER MATTERS WORTHY OF BEING DULY RECORDED


The translator of this history, when he comes to write this fifth
chapter, says that he considers it apocryphal, because in it Sancho Panza
speaks in a style unlike that which might have been expected from his
limited intelligence, and says things so subtle that he does not think it
possible he could have conceived them; however, desirous of doing what
his task imposed upon him, he was unwilling to leave it untranslated, and
therefore he went on to say:

Sancho came home in such glee and spirits that his wife noticed his
happiness a bowshot off, so much so that it made her ask him, "What have
you got, Sancho friend, that you are so glad?"

To which he replied, "Wife, if it were God's will, I should be very glad
not to be so well pleased as I show myself."

"I don't understand you, husband," said she, "and I don't know what you
mean by saying you would be glad, if it were God's will, not to be well
pleased; for, fool as I am, I don't know how one can find pleasure in not
having it."

"Hark ye, Teresa," replied Sancho, "I am glad because I have made up my
mind to go back to the service of my master Don Quixote, who means to go
out a third time to seek for adventures; and I am going with him again,
for my necessities will have it so, and also the hope that cheers me with
the thought that I may find another hundred crowns like those we have
spent; though it makes me sad to have to leave thee and the children; and
if God would be pleased to let me have my daily bread, dry-shod and at
home, without taking me out into the byways and cross-roads--and he could
do it at small cost by merely willing it--it is clear my happiness would
be more solid and lasting, for the happiness I have is mingled with
sorrow at leaving thee; so that I was right in saying I would be glad, if
it were God's will, not to be well pleased."

"Look here, Sancho," said Teresa; "ever since you joined on to a
knight-errant you talk in such a roundabout way that there is no
understanding you."

"It is enough that God understands me, wife," replied Sancho; "for he is
the understander of all things; that will do; but mind, sister, you must
look to Dapple carefully for the next three days, so that he may be fit
to take arms; double his feed, and see to the pack-saddle and other
harness, for it is not to a wedding we are bound, but to go round the
world, and play at give and take with giants and dragons and monsters,
and hear hissings and roarings and bellowings and howlings; and even all
this would be lavender, if we had not to reckon with Yanguesans and
enchanted Moors."

"I know well enough, husband," said Teresa, "that squires-errant don't
eat their bread for nothing, and so I will be always praying to our Lord
to deliver you speedily from all that hard fortune."

"I can tell you, wife," said Sancho, "if I did not expect to see myself
governor of an island before long, I would drop down dead on the spot."

"Nay, then, husband," said Teresa; "let the hen live, though it be with
her pip, live, and let the devil take all the governments in the world;
you came out of your mother's womb without a government, you have lived
until now without a government, and when it is God's will you will go, or
be carried, to your grave without a government. How many there are in the
world who live without a government, and continue to live all the same,
and are reckoned in the number of the people. The best sauce in the world
is hunger, and as the poor are never without that, they always eat with a
relish. But mind, Sancho, if by good luck you should find yourself with
some government, don't forget me and your children. Remember that
Sanchico is now full fifteen, and it is right he should go to school, if
his uncle the abbot has a mind to have him trained for the Church.
Consider, too, that your daughter Mari-Sancha will not die of grief if we
marry her; for I have my suspicions that she is as eager to get a husband
as you to get a government; and, after all, a daughter looks better ill
married than well whored."

"By my faith," replied Sancho, "if God brings me to get any sort of a
government, I intend, wife, to make such a high match for Mari-Sancha
that there will be no approaching her without calling her 'my lady."

"Nay, Sancho," returned Teresa; "marry her to her equal, that is the
safest plan; for if you put her out of wooden clogs into high-heeled
shoes, out of her grey flannel petticoat into hoops and silk gowns, out
of the plain 'Marica' and 'thou,' into 'Dona So-and-so' and 'my lady,'
the girl won't know where she is, and at every turn she will fall into a
thousand blunders that will show the thread of her coarse homespun
stuff."

"Tut, you fool," said Sancho; "it will be only to practise it for two or
three years; and then dignity and decorum will fit her as easily as a
glove; and if not, what matter? Let her he 'my lady,' and never mind what
happens."

"Keep to your own station, Sancho," replied Teresa; "don't try to raise
yourself higher, and bear in mind the proverb that says, 'wipe the nose
of your neigbbour's son, and take him into your house.' A fine thing it
would be, indeed, to marry our Maria to some great count or grand
gentleman, who, when the humour took him, would abuse her and call her
clown-bred and clodhopper's daughter and spinning wench. I have not been
bringing up my daughter for that all this time, I can tell you, husband.
Do you bring home money, Sancho, and leave marrying her to my care; there
is Lope Tocho, Juan Tocho's son, a stout, sturdy young fellow that we
know, and I can see he does not look sour at the girl; and with him, one
of our own sort, she will be well married, and we shall have her always
under our eyes, and be all one family, parents and children,
grandchildren and sons-in-law, and the peace and blessing of God will
dwell among us; so don't you go marrying her in those courts and grand
palaces where they won't know what to make of her, or she what to make of
herself."

"Why, you idiot and wife for Barabbas," said Sancho, "what do you mean by
trying, without why or wherefore, to keep me from marrying my daughter to
one who will give me grandchildren that will be called 'your lordship'?
Look ye, Teresa, I have always heard my elders say that he who does not
know how to take advantage of luck when it comes to him, has no right to
complain if it gives him the go-by; and now that it is knocking at our
door, it will not do to shut it out; let us go with the favouring breeze
that blows upon us."

It is this sort of talk, and what Sancho says lower down, that made the
translator of the history say he considered this chapter apocryphal.

"Don't you see, you animal," continued Sancho, "that it will be well for
me to drop into some profitable government that will lift us out of the
mire, and marry Mari-Sancha to whom I like; and you yourself will find
yourself called 'Dona Teresa Panza,' and sitting in church on a fine
carpet and cushions and draperies, in spite and in defiance of all the
born ladies of the town? No, stay as you are, growing neither greater nor
less, like a tapestry figure--Let us say no more about it, for Sanchica
shall be a countess, say what you will."

"Are you sure of all you say, husband?" replied Teresa. "Well, for all
that, I am afraid this rank of countess for my daughter will be her ruin.
You do as you like, make a duchess or a princess of her, but I can tell
you it will not be with my will and consent. I was always a lover of
equality, brother, and I can't bear to see people give themselves airs
without any right. They called me Teresa at my baptism, a plain, simple
name, without any additions or tags or fringes of Dons or Donas; Cascajo
was my father's name, and as I am your wife, I am called Teresa Panza,
though by right I ought to be called Teresa Cascajo; but 'kings go where
laws like,' and I am content with this name without having the 'Don' put
on top of it to make it so heavy that I cannot carry it; and I don't want
to make people talk about me when they see me go dressed like a countess
or governor's wife; for they will say at once, 'See what airs the slut
gives herself! Only yesterday she was always spinning flax, and used to
go to mass with the tail of her petticoat over her head instead of a
mantle, and there she goes to-day in a hooped gown with her broaches and
airs, as if we didn't know her!' If God keeps me in my seven senses, or
five, or whatever number I have, I am not going to bring myself to such a
pass; go you, brother, and be a government or an island man, and swagger
as much as you like; for by the soul of my mother, neither my daughter
nor I are going to stir a step from our village; a respectable woman
should have a broken leg and keep at home; and to be busy at something is
a virtuous damsel's holiday; be off to your adventures along with your
Don Quixote, and leave us to our misadventures, for God will mend them
for us according as we deserve it. I don't know, I'm sure, who fixed the
'Don' to him, what neither his father nor grandfather ever had."

"I declare thou hast a devil of some sort in thy body!" said Sancho. "God
help thee, what a lot of things thou hast strung together, one after the
other, without head or tail! What have Cascajo, and the broaches and the
proverbs and the airs, to do with what I say? Look here, fool and dolt
(for so I may call you, when you don't understand my words, and run away
from good fortune), if I had said that my daughter was to throw herself
down from a tower, or go roaming the world, as the Infanta Dona Urraca
wanted to do, you would be right in not giving way to my will; but if in
an instant, in less than the twinkling of an eye, I put the 'Don' and 'my
lady' on her back, and take her out of the stubble, and place her under a
canopy, on a dais, and on a couch, with more velvet cushions than all the
Almohades of Morocco ever had in their family, why won't you consent and
fall in with my wishes?"

"Do you know why, husband?" replied Teresa; "because of the proverb that
says 'who covers thee, discovers thee.' At the poor man people only throw
a hasty glance; on the rich man they fix their eyes; and if the said rich
man was once on a time poor, it is then there is the sneering and the
tattle and spite of backbiters; and in the streets here they swarm as
thick as bees."

"Look here, Teresa," said Sancho, "and listen to what I am now going to
say to you; maybe you never heard it in all your life; and I do not give
my own notions, for what I am about to say are the opinions of his
reverence the preacher, who preached in this town last Lent, and who
said, if I remember rightly, that all things present that our eyes
behold, bring themselves before us, and remain and fix themselves on our
memory much better and more forcibly than things past."

These observations which Sancho makes here are the other ones on account
of which the translator says he regards this chapter as apocryphal,
inasmuch as they are beyond Sancho's capacity.

"Whence it arises," he continued, "that when we see any person well
dressed and making a figure with rich garments and retinue of servants,
it seems to lead and impel us perforce to respect him, though memory may
at the same moment recall to us some lowly condition in which we have
seen him, but which, whether it may have been poverty or low birth, being
now a thing of the past, has no existence; while the only thing that has
any existence is what we see before us; and if this person whom fortune
has raised from his original lowly state (these were the very words the
padre used) to his present height of prosperity, be well bred, generous,
courteous to all, without seeking to vie with those whose nobility is of
ancient date, depend upon it, Teresa, no one will remember what he was,
and everyone will respect what he is, except indeed the envious, from
whom no fair fortune is safe."

"I do not understand you, husband," replied Teresa; "do as you like, and
don't break my head with any more speechifying and rethoric; and if you
have revolved to do what you say-"

"Resolved, you should say, woman," said Sancho, "not revolved."

"Don't set yourself to wrangle with me, husband," said Teresa; "I speak
as God pleases, and don't deal in out-of-the-way phrases; and I say if
you are bent upon having a government, take your son Sancho with you, and
teach him from this time on how to hold a government; for sons ought to
inherit and learn the trades of their fathers."

"As soon as I have the government," said Sancho, "I will send for him by
post, and I will send thee money, of which I shall have no lack, for
there is never any want of people to lend it to governors when they have
not got it; and do thou dress him so as to hide what he is and make him
look what he is to be."

"You send the money," said Teresa, "and I'll dress him up for you as fine
as you please."

"Then we are agreed that our daughter is to be a countess," said Sancho.

"The day that I see her a countess," replied Teresa, "it will be the same
to me as if I was burying her; but once more I say do as you please, for
we women are born to this burden of being obedient to our husbands,
though they be dogs;" and with this she began to weep in earnest, as if
she already saw Sanchica dead and buried.

Sancho consoled her by saying that though he must make her a countess, he
would put it off as long as possible. Here their conversation came to an
end, and Sancho went back to see Don Quixote, and make arrangements for
their departure.