It was a hard life, a life of poverty, of incessant struggle, of toil ill paid, of disappointment, but Cervantes carried within himself the antidote to all these evils.
Working as a servant in the inn was an Asturian girl with a broad face, a back of the head that was flat, a nose that was snubbed, and one eye that was blind, while the other was not in very good condition. The truth is that the charm of her body made up for her other faults:.
Y manos a la obra, que en la tardanza dicen que suele estar el peligro”.
Depart from my sight, you monster of nature, storehouse of untruths, depository of falsehoods, warehouse of rogueries, inventor of villainies, publisher of ravings and enemy of the respect which is due to royal personages.
The innkeeper shouted at them to stop because he had already told them he was crazy, and that being crazy he would be absolved even if he killed them all. Don Quixote shouted even louder, calling them perfidious traitors and saying that the lord of the castle was a varlet and a discourteous knight for allowing knights errant to be so badly treated, and that if he had already received the order of chivalry, he would enlighten him as to the full extent of his treachery.
That may be,” responded Sancho, “but I know that in my story, there’s nothing else to say: it ended right where you lost count of the number of goats that had crossed.
In truth I consider it a great fault, both on your part and on mine: on yours, because you do not have a high opinion of me; on mine, because I do not allow a higher opinion.
So we agree,’ said Sancho, ‘that our daughter’s going to marry an earl.’ ‘The day I see her married to an earl,’ Teresa replied, ‘is the day I’ll start digging her grave, but I’ll say it yet again – you do as you please, because that’s the burden we women were born with, obeying our husbands even if they are damn fools.
Oh dear!’ exclaimed the niece. ‘I’ll be blowed if my master doesn’t want to be a knight errant again!’ To which Don Quixote replied: ‘A knight errant I shall be until I die;.
And Cide Hamete says even more: he considers that the perpetrators of the hoax were as mad as the victims, and that the Duke and Duchess, going to such lengths to make fun of two fools, were within a hairsbreadth of looking like fools themselves.
Cuando una mujer vuelve a casarse es porque detestaba a su primer marido. Cuando un hombre vuelve a casarse es porque adoraba a su primera mujer. Las mujeres prueban suerte. Los hombres arriesgan la suya.
Como no estas experimentado en las cosas del mundo, todas las cosas que tienen algo de dificultad te parecen imposibles.
Mi prima es muy inteligente, demasiado inteligente para una mujer. Le falta el encanto indefinible de la debilidad. Los pies de barro dan todo su valor a la imagen de oro. Tiene unos pies preciosos, pero no son de barro. Blancos pies de porcelana, si quieres. Han pasado por el fuego, y lo que el fuego no destruye, lo endurece.
These are the consequences of a sinning woman’s behaviour. Her reputation is lost in the eyes of the man to whom she has surrendered after all his pleading and persuasion; and then he thinks that she will surrender to other men even more readily, and he is ready to believe every suspicion that finds its way into his mind.
Canta como una calandria, danza como el pensamiento, baila como una perdida, lee y escribe como un maestro de escuela y cuenta como un avariento.
Eventually Don Quixote’s last day on earth arrived, after he had received all the sacraments and had expressed, in many powerful words, his loathing of books of chivalry. The notary was present, and he said that he’d never read in any book of chivalry of any knight errant dying in his bed in such a calm and Christian manner as Don Quixote, who, amidst the tears and lamentations of everybody present, gave up the ghost; by which I mean to say he died.
Sin inteligencia no puede haber humor.
Pardon me, your Grace,” said Sancho, “for, as I can neither read nor write, as I have told you before, I neither know nor comprehend the rules of the knightly profession.
If one were to reply that those who compose these books write them as fictions, and therefore are not obliged to consider the fine points of truth, I should respond that the more truthful the fiction, the better it is, and the more probable and possible, the more pleasing.
This then, good Sirs, is what it means to be a knight-errant, and that which I have spoken to you of is the order of chivalry which I, although a sinner, have made my profession. That which the aforementioned knights professed, I do profess. And, therefore, I travel through these lonely and desolate places seeking adventures, with full resolution to offer mine own arm and person against the greatest dangers that Fortune may present, in aid of the weak and the needy.
She answered very humbly that her name was Tolosa, and that she was the daughter of a cobbler from Toledo who lived near the stalls of the Sancho Bienaya market, and no matter where she might be she would serve him and consider him her master.