DON QUIXOTE

 Volume II. 

 Part 37. 

 by Miguel de Cervantes

 Translated by John Ormsby

CHAPTER LXI. 

OF WHAT HAPPENED DON QUIXOTE ON ENTERING BARCELONA, TOGETHER WITH OTHERMATTERS THAT PARTAKE OF THE TRUE RATHER THAN OF THE INGENIOUS

Don Quixote passed three days and three nights with Roque, and had hepassed three hundred years he would have found enough to observe andwonder at in his mode of life. At daybreak they were in one spot, atdinner-time in another; sometimes they fled without knowing from whom, atother times they lay in wait, not knowing for what. They slept standing, breaking their slumbers to shift from place to place. There was nothingbut sending out spies and scouts, posting sentinels and blowing thematches of harquebusses, though they carried but few, for almost all usedflintlocks. Roque passed his nights in some place or other apart from hismen, that they might not know where he was, for the many proclamationsthe viceroy of Barcelona had issued against his life kept him in fear anduneasiness, and he did not venture to trust anyone, afraid that even hisown men would kill him or deliver him up to the authorities; of a truth, a weary miserable life! At length, by unfrequented roads, short cuts, andsecret paths, Roque, Don Quixote, and Sancho, together with six squires, set out for Barcelona. They reached the strand on Saint John's Eve duringthe night; and Roque, after embracing Don Quixote and Sancho (to whom hepresented the ten crowns he had promised but had not until then given), left them with many expressions of good-will on both sides. 

Roque went back, while Don Quixote remained on horseback, just as he was, waiting for day, and it was not long before the countenance of the fairAurora began to show itself at the balconies of the east, gladdening thegrass and flowers, if not the ear, though to gladden that too there cameat the same moment a sound of clarions and drums, and a din of bells, anda tramp, tramp, and cries of "Clear the way there!" of some runners, thatseemed to issue from the city. 

The dawn made way for the sun that with a face broader than a bucklerbegan to rise slowly above the low line of the horizon; Don Quixote andSancho gazed all round them; they beheld the sea, a sight until thenunseen by them; it struck them as exceedingly spacious and broad, muchmore so than the lakes of Ruidera which they had seen in La Mancha. Theysaw the galleys along the beach, which, lowering their awnings, displayedthemselves decked with streamers and pennons that trembled in the breezeand kissed and swept the water, while on board the bugles, trumpets, andclarions were sounding and filling the air far and near with melodiouswarlike notes. Then they began to move and execute a kind of skirmishupon the calm water, while a vast number of horsemen on fine horses andin showy liveries, issuing from the city, engaged on their side in asomewhat similar movement. The soldiers on board the galleys kept up aceaseless fire, which they on the walls and forts of the city returned, and the heavy cannon rent the air with the tremendous noise they made, towhich the gangway guns of the galleys replied. The bright sea, thesmiling earth, the clear air--though at times darkened by the smoke ofthe guns--all seemed to fill the whole multitude with unexpected delight. Sancho could not make out how it was that those great masses that movedover the sea had so many feet. 

And now the horsemen in livery came galloping up with shouts andoutlandish cries and cheers to where Don Quixote stood amazed andwondering; and one of them, he to whom Roque had sent word, addressinghim exclaimed, "Welcome to our city, mirror, beacon, star and cynosure ofall knight-errantry in its widest extent! Welcome, I say, valiant DonQuixote of La Mancha; not the false, the fictitious, the apocryphal, thatthese latter days have offered us in lying histories, but the true, thelegitimate, the real one that Cide Hamete Benengeli, flower ofhistorians, has described to us!"

Don Quixote made no answer, nor did the horsemen wait for one, butwheeling again with all their followers, they began curvetting round DonQuixote, who, turning to Sancho, said, "These gentlemen have plainlyrecognised us; I will wager they have read our history, and even thatnewly printed one by the Aragonese. "

The cavalier who had addressed Don Quixote again approached him and said, "Come with us, Senor Don Quixote, for we are all of us your servants andgreat friends of Roque Guinart's;" to which Don Quixote returned, "Ifcourtesy breeds courtesy, yours, sir knight, is daughter or very nearlyakin to the great Roque's; carry me where you please; I will have no willbut yours, especially if you deign to employ it in your service. "

The cavalier replied with words no less polite, and then, all closing inaround him, they set out with him for the city, to the music of theclarions and the drums. As they were entering it, the wicked one, who isthe author of all mischief, and the boys who are wickeder than the wickedone, contrived that a couple of these audacious irrepressible urchinsshould force their way through the crowd, and lifting up, one of themDapple's tail and the other Rocinante's, insert a bunch of furze undereach. The poor beasts felt the strange spurs and added to their anguishby pressing their tails tight, so much so that, cutting a multitude ofcapers, they flung their masters to the ground. Don Quixote, covered withshame and out of countenance, ran to pluck the plume from his poor jade'stail, while Sancho did the same for Dapple. His conductors tried topunish the audacity of the boys, but there was no possibility of doingso, for they hid themselves among the hundreds of others that werefollowing them. Don Quixote and Sancho mounted once more, and with thesame music and acclamations reached their conductor's house, which waslarge and stately, that of a rich gentleman, in short; and there for thepresent we will leave them, for such is Cide Hamete's pleasure.