Peter Motteux (1700): Chapters 11-12

Chapter 11

What Passed Between Don Quixote and the Goatherds

The Knight was very courteously received by the goatherds, and as for Sancho, after he had set up Rozinante and his ass, as well as he could, he presently repaired to the attractive smell of some pieces of kid’s flesh, which stood boiling in a kettle over the fire. The hungry squire would immediately have tried whether they were fit to be removed out of the kettle into the stomach, but was not put to that trouble; for the goatherds took them off the fire, and, spreading some sheep-skins on the ground, soon got their rural feast ready, and cheerfully invited his master and him to partake of what they had. Next, with some coarse compliment, after the country way, they desired Don Quixote to sit down on a trough with the bottom upwards; and then six of them, who were all that belonged to that told, squatted them down round the skins, while Sancho stood up to wait upon his master, and give him drink in a horn cup, which the goatherds used. But he, seeing his man stand behind, said to him, “That thou mayest understand, Sancho, the benefits of knight-errantry, and how the meanest retainers to it have a fair prospect of being speedily esteemed and honored by the world, it is my pleasure that thou sit thee down by me in a company of those good people; and that there be no difference now observed between thee and me, thy natural lord and master, that thou eat in the same dish, and drink in the same cup; for it may be said of knight-errantry as of love, that it makes all things equal.” “I thank your worship,” cried Sancho; “but yet I must needs own, had I but a good deal of meat before me, I would eat it well, or rather better, standing, and by myself, than if I sat by an emperor; and, to deal plainly and truly with you, I had rather munch a crust of brown bread and an onion in a corner, without any more ado and ceremony, than feed upon turkey at another man’s table, where one is fain to sit mincing and chewing his meat an hour together, drink little, be always wiping his fingers and his chops, and never dare to cough nor sneeze, though he has never so much a mind to do it, nor do many things which a body may do freely by one’s self; therefore, good sir, change those tokens of your kindness, which I have a right to by being your worship’s squire, into something that may do me more good. As for these same honors, I heartily thank you as much as if I had accepted them, but yet I give up my right to them from this time to the world’s end.” “Talk no more,” replied Don Quixote, “but sit thee down, for the humble shall be exalted”; and so, pulling him by the arm, he forced him to sit by him.

All this while the goatherds, who did not understand this jargon of knights-errant, chivalry, and squires, fed heartily and said nothing, but stared upon their guests, who very fairly swallowed whole luncheons, as big as their fists, with a mighty appetite. The first course being over, they brought in the second, consisting of dried acorns, and half a cheese as hard as a brick. Nor was the horn idle all the while, but went merrily round up and down so many times, sometimes full and sometimes empty, like the two buckets of a well, that they made shift at last to drink off one of the two skins of wine which they had there. And now, Don Quixote having satisfied his appetite, he took a handful of acorns, and looking earnestly upon them: “O happy age,” cried he, “which our first parents called the age of gold! Not because gold, so much adored in this iron age, was then easily purchased, but because those two fatal words mine and thine, were distinctions unknown to...