Don Quixote delivered his discourse in such a manner and in suchcorrect language, that for the time being he made it impossible forany of his hearers to consider him a madman; on the contrary, asthey were mostly gentlemen, to whom arms are an appurtenance by birth,they listened to him with great pleasure as he continued: "Here, then,I say is what the student has to undergo; first of all poverty: notthat all are poor, but to put the case as strongly as possible: andwhen I have said that he endures poverty, I think nothing more need besaid about his hard fortune, for he who is poor has no share of thegood things of life. This poverty he suffers from in various ways,hunger, or cold, or nakedness, or all together; but for all that it isnot so extreme but that he gets something to eat, though it may beat somewhat unseasonable hours and from the leavings of the rich;for the greatest misery of the student is what they themselves call'going out for soup,' and there is always some neighbour's brazieror hearth for them, which, if it does not warm, at least tempers thecold to them, and lastly, they sleep comfortably at night under aroof. I will not go into other particulars, as for example want ofshirts, and no superabundance of shoes, thin and threadbaregarments, and gorging themselves to surfeit in their voracity whengood luck has treated them to a banquet of some sort. By this roadthat I have described, rough and hard, stumbling here, fallingthere, getting up again to fall again, they reach the rank theydesire, and that once attained, we have seen many who have passedthese Syrtes and Scyllas and Charybdises, as if borne flying on thewings of favouring fortune; we have seen them, I say, ruling andgoverning the world from a chair, their hunger turned into satiety,their cold into comfort, their nakedness into fine raiment, theirsleep on a mat into repose in holland and damask, the justly earnedreward of their virtue; but, contrasted and compared with what thewarrior undergoes, all they have undergone falls far short of it, as Iam now about to show."
CHAPTER XXXVIII
WHICH TREATS OF THE CURIOUS DISCOURSE DON QUIXOTE DELIVERED ONARMS AND LETTERS
CONTINUING his discourse Don Quixote said: "As we began in thestudent's case with poverty and its accompaniments, let us see nowif the soldier is richer, and we shall find that in poverty itselfthere is no one poorer; for he is dependent on his miserable pay,which comes late or never, or else on what he can plunder, seriouslyimperilling his life and conscience; and sometimes his nakednesswill be so great that a slashed doublet serves him for uniform andshirt, and in the depth of winter he has to defend himself against theinclemency of the weather in the open field with nothing better thanthe breath of his mouth, which I need not say, coming from an emptyplace, must come out cold, contrary to the laws of nature. To besure he looks forward to the approach of night to make up for allthese discomforts on the bed that awaits him, which, unless by somefault of his, never sins by being over narrow, for he can easilymeasure out on the ground as he likes, and roll himself about in it tohis heart's content without any fear of the sheets slipping awayfrom him. Then, after all this, suppose the day and hour for takinghis degree in his calling to have come; suppose the day of battle tohave arrived, when they invest him with the doctor's cap made of lint,to mend some bullet-hole, perhaps, that has gone through histemples, or left him with a crippled arm or leg. Or if this does nothappen, and merciful Heaven watches over him and keeps him safe andsound, it may be he will be in the same poverty he was in before,and he must go through more engagements and more battles, and comevictorious out of all before he betters himself; but miracles ofthat sort are seldom seen. For tell me, sirs, if you have everreflected upon it, by how much do those who have gained by war fallshort of the number of those who have perished in it? No doubt youwill reply that there can be no comparison, that the dead cannot benumbered, while the living who have been rewarded may be summed upwith three figures. All which is the reverse in the case of men ofletters; for by skirts, to say nothing of sleeves, they all find meansof support; so that though the soldier has more to endure, hisreward is much less. But against all this it may be urged that it iseasier to reward two thousand soldiers, for the former may beremunerated by giving them places, which must perforce be conferredupon men of their calling, while the latter can only be recompensedout of the very property of the master they serve; but thisimpossibility only strengthens my argument.
"Putting this, however, aside, for it is a puzzling question forwhich it is difficult to find a solution, let us return to thesuperiority of arms over letters, a matter still undecided, so manyare the arguments put forward on each side; for besides those I havementioned, letters say that without them arms cannot maintainthemselves, for war, too, has its laws and is governed by them, andlaws belong to the domain of letters and men of letters. To thisarms make answer that without them laws cannot be maintained, for byarms states are defended, kingdoms preserved, cities protected,roads made safe, seas cleared of pirates; and, in short, if it werenot for them, states, kingdoms, monarchies, cities, ways by sea andland would be exposed to the violence and confusion which war bringswith it, so long as it lasts and is free to make use of its privilegesand powers. And then it is plain that whatever costs most is valuedand deserves to be valued most. To attain to eminence in letters costsa man time, watching, hunger, nakedness, headaches, indigestions,and other things of the sort, some of which I have already referredto. But for a man to come in the ordinary course of things to be agood soldier costs him all the student suffers, and in an incomparablyhigher degree, for at every step he runs the risk of losing hislife. For what dread of want or poverty that can reach or harass thestudent can compare with what the soldier feels, who finds himselfbeleaguered in some stronghold mounting guard in some ravelin orcavalier, knows that the enemy is pushing a mine towards the postwhere he is stationed, and cannot under any circumstances retire orfly from the imminent danger that threatens him? All he can do is toinform his captain of what is going on so that he may try to remedy itby a counter-mine, and then stand his ground in fear and expectationof the moment when he will fly up to the clouds without wings anddescend into the deep against his will. And if this seems a triflingrisk, let us see whether it is equalled or surpassed by theencounter of two galleys stem to stem, in the midst of the open sea,locked and entangled one with the other, when the soldier has nomore standing room than two feet of the plank of the spur; and yet,though he sees before him threatening him as many ministers of deathas there are cannon of the foe pointed at him, not a lance length fromhis body, and sees too that with the first heedless step he will godown to visit the profundities of Neptune's bosom, still withdauntless heart, urged on by honour that nerves him, he makeshimself a target for all that musketry, and struggles to cross thatnarrow path to the enemy's ship. And what is still more marvellous, nosooner has one gone down into the depths he will never rise fromtill the end of the world, than another takes his place; and if he toofalls into the sea that waits for him like an enemy, another andanother will succeed him without a moment's pause between theirdeaths: courage and daring the greatest that all the chances of warcan show. Happy the blest ages that knew not the dread fury of thosedevilish engines of artillery, whose inventor I am persuaded is inhell receiving the reward of his diabolical invention, by which hemade it easy for a base and cowardly arm to take the life of a gallantgentleman; and that, when he knows not how or whence, in the height ofthe ardour and enthusiasm that fire and animate brave hearts, thereshould come some random bullet, discharged perhaps by one who fledin terror at the flash when he fired off his accursed machine, whichin an instant puts an end to the projects and cuts off the life of onewho deserved to live for ages to come. And thus when I reflect onthis, I am almost tempted to say that in my heart I repent of havingadopted this profession of knight-errant in so detestable an age as welive in now; for though no peril can make me fear, still it gives mesome uneasiness to think that powder and lead may rob me of theopportunity of making myself famous and renowned throughout theknown earth by the might of my arm and the edge of my sword. ButHeaven's will be done; if I succeed in my attempt I shall be all themore honoured, as I have faced greater dangers than the knights-errantof yore exposed themselves to."
All this lengthy discourse Don Quixote delivered while the otherssupped, forgetting to raise a morsel to his lips, though Sancho morethan once told him to eat his supper, as he would have time enoughafterwards to say all he wanted. It excited fresh pity in those whohad heard him to see a man of apparently sound sense, and withrational views on every subject he discussed, so hopelessly wanting inall, when his wretched unlucky chivalry was in question. The curatetold him he was quite right in all he had said in favour of arms,and that he himself, though a man of letters and a graduate, was ofthe same opinion.
They finished their supper, the cloth was removed, and while thehostess, her daughter, and Maritornes were getting Don Quixote of LaMancha's garret ready, in which it was arranged that the women were tobe quartered by themselves for the night, Don Fernando begged thecaptive to tell them the story of his life, for it could not fail tobe strange and interesting, to judge by the hints he had let fall onhis arrival in company with Zoraida. To this the captive repliedthat he would very willingly yield to his request, only he fearedhis tale would not give them as much pleasure as he wished;nevertheless, not to be wanting in compliance, he would tell it. Thecurate and the others thanked him and added their entreaties, and hefinding himself so pressed said there was no occasion ask, where acommand had such weight, and added, "If your worships will give meyour attention you will hear a true story which, perhaps, fictitiousones constructed with ingenious and studied art cannot come up to."These words made them settle themselves in their places and preserve adeep silence, and he seeing them waiting on his words in muteexpectation, began thus in a pleasant quiet voice.
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