“I must say, senor, your worship said quite
right, that in order to be able to swear without a
weight on my conscience that I had seen you do mad
things, it would be well for me to see if it were only
one; though in your worship’s remaining here
I have seen a very great one.”
“Did I not tell thee so?” said Don Quixote.
“Wait, Sancho, and I will do them in the saying
of a credo,” and pulling off his breeches in
all haste he stripped himself to his skin and his
shirt, and then, without more ado, he cut a couple
of gambados in the air, and a couple of somersaults,
heels over head, making such a display that, not to
see it a second time, Sancho wheeled Rocinante round,
and felt easy, and satisfied in his mind that he could
swear he had left his master mad; and so we will leave
him to follow his road until his return, which was
a quick one.
IN WHICH ARE CONTINUED THE REFINEMENTS WHEREWITH DON QUIXOTE PLAYED THE
PART OF A LOVER IN THE SIERRA MORENA
Returning to the proceedings of him of the Rueful
Countenance when he found himself alone, the history
says that when Don Quixote had completed the performance
of the somersaults or capers, naked from the waist
down and clothed from the waist up, and saw that Sancho
had gone off without waiting to see any more crazy
feats, he climbed up to the top of a high rock, and
there set himself to consider what he had several times
before considered without ever coming to any conclusion
on the point, namely whether it would be better and
more to his purpose to imitate the outrageous madness
of Roland, or the melancholy madness of Amadis; and
communing with himself he said:
“What wonder is it if Roland was so good a knight
and so valiant as everyone says he was, when, after
all, he was enchanted, and nobody could kill him save
by thrusting a corking pin into the sole of his foot,
and he always wore shoes with seven iron soles?
Though cunning devices did not avail him against Bernardo
del Carpio, who knew all about them, and strangled
him in his arms at Roncesvalles. But putting the
question of his valour aside, let us come to his losing
his wits, for certain it is that he did lose them
in consequence of the proofs he discovered at the
fountain, and the intelligence the shepherd gave him
of Angelica having slept more than two siestas with
Medoro, a little curly-headed Moor, and page to Agramante.
If he was persuaded that this was true, and that his
lady had wronged him, it is no wonder that he should
have gone mad; but I, how am I to imitate him in his
madness, unless I can imitate him in the cause of
it? For my Dulcinea, I will venture to swear,
never saw a Moor in her life, as he is, in his proper
costume, and she is this day as the mother that bore
her, and I should plainly be doing her a wrong if,
fancying anything else, I were to go mad with the same
kind of madness as Roland the Furious. On the
