Sancho Panza

“ Sancho arose, not without aching bones, and crept in the dark to where the innkeeper was, and said to him: "My lord constable, do us the favour and courtesy to give me a little rosemary, oil, wine, and salt to cure one of the best knights-errant in the world, who lies yonder in bed sorely wounded at the hands of a Moorish enchanter." When the innkeeper heard this he took Sancho Panza for a man out of his wits, but nevertheless gave him what he wanted, and Sancho carried it to Don Quixote. ”

“ The guests below had forgotten all about him, so absorbed were they in the interest of a tale of woeful ending, when the voice of Sancho Panza burst upon their ears.
‘Hasten! hasten! good sirs; hasten and help my master in the hardest battle I have ever seen him fight. By my faith, he has dealt such a blow to the giant that his head he has cut clean off.’
‘What is that you say?’ asked the priest, who was reading out the tale. ‘Are you out of your senses, Sancho?’ But his question was lost in a furious noise from above, in which Don Quixote might be heard crying:
‘Rogue, thief, villain! ”

“ Here was the gospel of Sancho Panza, I thought, the easy acceptance of life, the unashamed joy in food and color and the softness of women's hair. But as I walked out of the village across the harsh plain of Castile, grey-green and violet under the deepening night, the memory came to me of the knight of the sorrowful countenance, Don Quixote, blunderingly trying to remould the world, pitifully sure of the power of his own ideal. And in these two Spain seemed to be manifest. Far indeed were they from the restless industrial world of joyless enforced labor and incessant goading war. ”

“ Perhaps it will be as good for broken bones as for wounds."
"If I had it here," sighed Don Quixote, "we should lack nothing. But I swear to thee, Sancho Panza, on the faith of a knight-errant, that before two days pass, unless fortune forbids, I will have it in my possession."
"I pray you," asked Sancho, "in how many days do you think we shall be able to move our feet?"
"I cannot say," said the battered knight; "but I take on myself the blame of all, for I should not have drawn my sword against men that are not knights. ”

“ As his master grows madder, Sancho grows wiser, until at last he becomes capable of direction and guidance toward the rueful knight. As we proceed we begin to suspect that the peasant-squire exists as a kind of chorus to illustrate the excesses of his master and criticize his absurdities. But apart altogether from Don Quixote, Sancho Panza is a striking and arresting figure in modern fiction, possessing a philosophy of his own, rich in worldly wisdom and abounding with practical ability. ”

“ Sancho Panza ran as fast as his ass could drive to help his master, whom he found lying, and not able to stir, such a blow had he and Rozinante received. "Mercy o' me!" cried Sancho, "did not I give your worship fair warning? Did not I tell you they were windmills, and that nobody could think otherwise, unless he had also windmills in his head!"
"Peace, friend Sancho," replied Don Quixote: "there is nothing so subject to the inconstancy of fortune as war. ”

“ I would have your graces understand that Sancho Panza is one of the drollest squires that ever served knight-errant; sometimes there is a simplicity about him so acute that it is an amusement to try and make out whether he is simple or sharp; he has mischievous tricks that stamp him rogue, and blundering ways that prove him a booby; he doubts everything and believes everything; when I fancy he is on the point of coming down headlong from sheer stupidity, he comes out with something shrewd that sends him up to the skies. ”

“ Engaged in friendly discourse, they came in sight of eighty-five or eighty-six windmills; and as Don Quixote espied them he said to his Squire, “Fortune favours us. Look yonder, friend Jesse—I mean Sancho—where thou mayest discover some more than eighty disloyal giants, and monsters of sedition, whom I intend to encounter and slay.” “What giants?” said Sancho Panza. “These thou seest yonder,” answered his master, “with their long and far-reaching arms, for some are wont to have them of the full length of a league. Fly not, ye cowards, and vile caitiffs!” ”

“ I have followed Don Quixote as faithfully as Sancho Panza on his "Dapple;" have seen him fight, conquer, suffer defeat, ride through his land of dreams; have seen his pasteboard helmet; have noted melancholy settle round him as shadows on the landscape of an autumn day; have seen him grow sick, weaken, die; but have known in him only high dreams, attempted high achievings; have found him honor's soul, and holding high regard for women ”

“ As soon as Sancho Panza saw him enter arrayed in a shirt and a nightcap with the lamp in his hand, which showed him to be a very ugly man, he asked his master: "Will this by chance be some wizard Moor come to torment us?"
"A wizard it cannot be," said Don Quixote, "for those under enchantment never let themselves be seen." ”

“ It was not blows, Sancho said, but that the rock had many points and projections, and that each of them had left its mark. "Pray, senora," he added, "manage to save some tow, as there will be no want of some one to use it, for my loins too are rather sore."
"Then you must have fallen too," said the hostess.
"I did not fall," said Sancho Panza, "but from the shock I got at seeing my master fall, my body aches so that I feel as if I had had a thousand thwacks." ”

“ But hardly had the light of day made it possible to see and distinguish things, when the first object that presented itself to the eyes of Sancho Panza was the squire of the Grove's nose, which was so big that it almost overshadowed his whole body. ”

“ Take the book again, Sir, and see if I am put into it, and if he has changed my name, too.’ ‘By what I hear you say, my friend,’ replied the stranger, ‘you are, no doubt, Sancho Panza, the esquire of Don Quixote.’ ‘To be sure I am,’ answered Sancho, ‘and proud of it, too.’ ‘Then, in truth,’ said the gentleman, ‘this new author does not treat you with the propriety shown in your own person; he makes you a glutton and a fool ”

“ He gave his crack-brained old gentleman a devoted servant, with no particle of his master’s idealism or insanity. Sancho Panza is entirely normal, from the world’s point of view, a sturdy and practical fellow; yet he gets into just as many absurd scrapes as his master—because he is ignorant, and is betrayed by his own greed. So we are brought back again and again to the question: Who is it that is really crazy in this shifting and uncertain world? Is a reader of literature insane because he sets out to apply the ideas of that{92} literature in real life? ”

“ Thus talking, they came over the brow of a hill, and looking down on the plain below, Don Quixote saw there thirty or forty windmills.
"Ha!" cried he. "Fortune directs our affairs better than we ourselves could do. Look yonder, friend Sancho, there are at at least thirty outrageous giants whom I must now fight."
"Giants!" gasped Sancho Panza, "what giants?"
"Those whom you see over there with their long arms," answered Don Quixote. "Some of that horrible race, I have heard, have arms near two leagues in length."
"But, sir," said Sancho, "these are no giants. ”

“ All this being arranged, Sancho Panza, without bidding his wife and children farewell, and Don Quixote, without saying good-bye to his Housekeeper and Niece, sallied forth from the village one night, unknown to any person living. They travelled so far that night that at daybreak they were safe against discovery, even if they were pursued. And Sancho Panza rode along on his beast like a patriarch with his wallet and bottle, full of a huge desire to see himself Governor of the Island which his Master had promised him. ”

“ And have we not perfect examples in the delicious pages of Cervantes?—the grave, the wise, the high-minded simpletonianism of Don Quixotte; and that contrastingly low and mother-wit kind in the credulous Sancho Panza—ignorance made mad by contact with madness engendered of reading? The very Rosinante that carried madness partakes of the sweet and insane simpletonianism, and Sancho and his ass are fellows well met, well matched.
Curate.—As he is the cleverest actor that plays the fool, so is he the wisest and ablest writer that portrays simpletonianism. ”

“ The others coming in, Don Quixote made his confession, and one went to fetch Sancho Panza. With tears in his eyes the squire sought his poor master's side, and when in the first clause of his will Don Quixote made mention of Sancho, saying afterwards, "Pardon me, my friend, that I brought upon you the shame of my madness," Sancho cried out, "Woe's me, your worship, do not die this bout; take my counsel, and live many a good year. For it is the maddest trick a man can play in his whole life to go out like the snuff of a candle, and die merely of the mulligrubs!" ”

“ It is indeed a species of vanity which must have an audience, however small or however unsuited to its purposes. Again, the element of conspiracy is as the apple of its eye, and it must confide its ideas and aspirations to one sympathetic ear at least. In Sancho Panza, Don Quixote finds a strange confidant. The luckless peasant is completely unable to comprehend his master’s point of view, but is carried away by his rodomontades and the glib and gorgeous promises of preferment and prosperity which the crack-brained knight holds out to him. ”

“ It would be an endless task to put before us now the death and the charms of the peerless Altisidora, not dead as the ignorant world imagines, but living in the voice of fame and in the penance which Sancho Panza, here present, has to undergo to restore her to the long-lost light. ”

“ Directly the shepherds had departed, Sancho Panza came down to look after his master, and finding him bruised and bleeding, but not stunned, he fell to reproaching him for his folly. But the knight only answered that if the enemies around him seemed to bear the likeness of sheep, it was only because they had been enchanted, and that their fellows now marching along the road would soon regain their proper shape, and become straight men and tall again. ”

“ As they entered the village, two boys fighting in a field attracted the knight's attention, and he heard one of them cry, "Never fret yourself, you shall never see her while you have breath in your body!" The knight immediately applied these words to himself and Dulcinea, and nothing that Sancho could say had power to cheer his spirits. Moreover, the boys of the village, having seen them, raised a shout, and came laughing about them, saying, "Oh, law! here is Gaffer Sancho Panza's donkey as fine as a lady, and Don Quixote's beast thinner than ever!" ”

“ Sancho. No, no! There is nothing so easy for a wizard like Freston as to change things from one shape to the other. I will wager if you now mount your ass and ride over the hill after them, you will find no sheep there, but the knights and squires come back to their own shape, and the armies marching as when we first saw them."
Now, after this and many other adventures (about which, perhaps, you may some day read for yourself) , Don Quixote and Sancho Panza rode away into the mountains, for the Knight was sorely in need of a quiet place in which to rest. ”

“ Within every one of us there lives both a Don Quixote and a Sancho Panza to whom we hearken by turns; and though Sancho most persuades us, it is Don Quixote that we find ourselves obliged to admire.... ”

“ But Sancho Panza, whenever he met with any asses, followed them with his eyes and his heart, and he had hardly [176] caught sight of the man when he knew him to be the escaped robber, Gines of Passamonte, and the Ass to be none other than his beloved Dapple.
Gines had disguised himself as a gipsy, but Sancho knew him, and called out in a loud voice: 'Ah! thief Gines, give up my jewel, let go my life, give up mine Ass, give up the comfort of my home. Fly, scoundrel! Begone, thief! ”

“ They’ll take up my bones out of this, when it is heaven’s will that I’m found, picked clean, white and polished, and my good Dapple’s with them, and by that, perhaps, it will be found out who we are, at least by such as have heard that Sancho Panza never separated from his ass, nor his ass from Sancho Panza. Unlucky wretches, I say again, that our hard fate should not let us die in our own country and among our own people, where if there was no help for our misfortune, at any rate there would be someone to grieve for it and to close our eyes as we passed away! ”

“ Cervantes does not venture to introduce Sancho Panza in person till near the end of the seventh chapter, and he is visibly ill at ease over his new creation. It is quite plain that, at this stage, Cervantes knew very little about Sancho Panza, and his first remark is that the squire was an honest man (if any poor man can be called honest) , ‘but with very little sense in his pate.’ This is not the Sancho who has survived: honesty is not the most pre-eminent quality of the squire, and if anybody thinks Sancho Panza a born fool he must have a high standard of ability. ”

“ But the one who admired her most was Sancho Panza, for it seemed to him (what indeed was true) that in all the days of his life he had never seen such a lovely creature; and he asked the curate with great eagerness who this beautiful lady was, and what she wanted in these out-of-the-way quarters.
“This fair lady, brother Sancho,” replied the curate, “is no less a personage than the heiress in the direct male line of the great kingdom of Micomicon, who has come in search of your master to beg a boon of him, which is that he redress a wrong or injury that a wicked giant has done her ”