The progress of Camacho's wedding; with other delightful accidents.

Don Quixote and Sancho were now interrupted by a great noise of joy and acclamation raised by the horsemen, who, shouting and galloping, went to meet the young couple; who, surrounded by a thousand instruments and devices, were coming to the arbour, accompanied by the curate, their relations, and all the better sort of the neighbourhood, set out in their holiday-clothes. "Hey-day," quoth Sancho, as soon as he saw the bride, "what have we here? Truly this is no country lass, but a fine court-lady, all in her silks and satins! Look, look ye, master, see if, instead of glass necklaces, she have not on fillets of rich coral; and instead of green serge of Cuencha, a thirty-piled velvet. Bless us, see what rings she has on her fingers; no jet, no pewter baubles, but pure beaten gold, and set with pearls too; if every pearl be not as white as a syllabub, and each of them as precious as an eye! How she is bedizened, and glistens from top to toe! And now yonder again, what fine long locks the young slut has got; if they be not false, I never saw longer in my born days! Ah, what a fine stately person she is! What a number of trinkets and glaring gewgaws are dangling in her hair and about her neck! Well, I say no more, but happy is the man that has thee!"

Don Quixote could not help smiling to hear Sancho set forth the bride after his rustic way, though at the same time he beheld her with admiration. The procession was just arrived when they heard a piercing outcry, and a voice calling out, "Stay, rash and hasty people, stay!" Upon which, all turning about, they saw a person coming after them in a black coat, bordered with crimson powdered with flames of fire. On his head he wore a garland of mournful cypress, and a large truncheon in his hand, headed with an iron spike. As soon as he drew near, they knew him to be the gallant Basil; and seeing him come thus unlooked for, and with such an outcry and behaviour, began to fear some mischief would ensue. He came up tired and panting before the bride and bridegroom; then leaning on his truncheon, he fixed his eyes on Quiteria; and with a fearful hollow voice, "Too well you know," cried he, "unkind Quiteria, that by the ties of truth, and the laws of that Heaven which we all revere, while I have life you cannot be married to another. You are now about to snap all the ties between us, and give my right to another; whose large possessions, though they can procure him all other blessings, I had never envied, could they not have purchased you. But no more. It is ordained; and I will therefore remove this unhappy obstacle out of your way. Live, rich Camacho; live happy with the ungrateful Quiteria many years; and let the poor, the miserable Basil die, whose poverty has clipped the wings of his felicity, and laid him in the grave!"

Saying these words, he drew out of his supposed truncheon a short tuck that was concealed in it, and setting the hilt of it against the ground, he fell upon the point in such a manner that it came out all bloody at his back, the poor wretch weltering on the ground in blood. His friends, strangely confounded by this sad accident, ran to help him; and Don Quixote, forsaking Rozinante, made haste to his assistance, and taking him up in his arms, found there was still life in him. They would have drawn the sword out of his body, but the curate urged it was not convenient till he had made confession, and prepared himself for death, which would immediately attend the effusion of blood upon pulling the tuck out of the body.

While they were debating this point, Basil seemed to come a little to himself; and calling on the bride, "Oh, Quiteria!" said he, with a faint and doleful voice, "now, now, in this last and departing minute of my life, even in this dreadful agony of death, would you but vouchsafe to give me your hand, and own yourself my wife, I should think myself rewarded for the torments I endure; and—pleased to think this desperate deed made me yours, though but for a moment—I would die contented."

The curate, hearing this, very earnestly recommended to him the care of his soul's health, which at the present juncture was more proper than any other worldly concern; that his time was but short, and he ought to be very earnest with Heaven, in imploring mercy and forgiveness for all his sins, but especially for this last desperate action. To which Basil answered, that "he could think of no happiness till Quiteria yielded to be his; but if she would do it, that satisfaction would calm his spirits, and dispose him to confess himself heartily."

Don Quixote, hearing this, cried out aloud, "that Basil's demand was just and reasonable, and SigÑor Camacho might as honourably receive her as the worthy Basil's widow, as if he had received her at her father's hands." Camacho stood all this while strangely confounded, till at last he was prevailed on, by the repeated importunities of Basil's friends, to consent that Quiteria should humour the dying man, knowing her own happiness would thereby be deferred but a few minutes longer. Then they all bent their entreaties to Quiteria, some with tears in their eyes, others with all the engaging arguments their pity could suggest. She stood a long time inexorable, and did not return any answer, till at last the curate came to her, and bid her resolve what she would do, for Basil could not now live many minutes. Then the poor virgin, trembling and dismayed, without speaking a word, came to Basil, who lay gasping for breath, with his eyes fixed in his head as if he were just expiring; she kneeled down before him, and with the most manifest signs of grief beckoned to him for his hand. Then Basil opening his eyes, and fixing them in a languishing posture on hers, "Oh, Quiteria," said he, "your heart at last relents when your pity comes too late. Thy arms are now extended to relieve me, when those of death draw me to their embraces; and they, alas, are much too strong for thine! All I desire of thee, O fatal beauty, is this, let not that fair hand deceive me now, as it has done before; but confess that what you do is free and voluntary, without constraint, or in compliance to any one's commands; declare me openly thy true and lawful husband: thou wilt not sure dissemble with one in death, and deal falsely with his departing soul, that all his life has been true to thee?"

In the midst of all this discourse he fainted away, and all the by-standers thought him gone. The poor Quiteria, with blushing modesty, took him by the hand, and with great emotion, "No force," said she, "could ever work upon my will; therefore believe it purely my own free will, that I here declare you my only lawful husband: here is my hand in pledge; and I expect yours as freely in return, if your pains and this sudden accident have not yet bereft you of all sense." "I give it to you," said Basil, with all the presence of mind imaginable, "and here I own myself thy husband." "And I thy wife," said she, "whether thy life be long, or whether from my arms they bear thee this instant to the grave." "Methinks," quoth Sancho, "this young man talks too much for one in his condition; pray advise him to leave off his wooing, and mind his soul's health. I suspect his death is more in his tongue than between his teeth." Now when Basil and Quiteria had thus plighted their faith to each other, while yet their hands were joined together, the tender-hearted curate, with tears in his eyes, poured on them both the nuptial blessing, beseeching Heaven, at the same time, to have mercy on the new-married man's soul, and in a manner mixing the burial service with the matrimonial.

As soon as the benediction was pronounced, up starts Basil briskly from the ground, and with an unexpected activity whips the sword out of his body, and caught his dear Quiteria in his arms. All the spectators stood amazed, and some of the simpler sort stuck not to cry out "A miracle, a miracle!" "No miracle," cried Basil, "no miracle, but a stratagem." The curate, more astonished than all the rest, came to feel the wound, and discovered that the sword had no where passed through the cunning Basil's body, but only through a tin pipe full of blood artfully fitted close to him; and, as it was afterwards known, so prepared that the blood could not congeal. In short the curate, Camacho, and the company, found they had all been egregiously imposed upon. As for the bride, she was so far from being displeased, that, hearing it urged that the marriage could not stand good in law because it was fraudulent and deceitful, she publicly declared that she again confirmed it to be just, and by the free consent of both parties.

Camacho and his friends, judging by this that the trick was premeditated, and that she was privy to the plot, had recourse to a stronger argument; and, drawing their swords, set furiously on Basil, in whose defence almost as many were immediately unsheathed. Don Quixote immediately mounting with his lance couched, and covered with his shield, led the van of Basil's party, and falling in with the enemy, charged them briskly. Sancho, who never liked any dangerous work, resolved to stand neuter, and so retired under the walls of the mighty pot whence he had got the precious skimmings, thinking that would be respected whichever side gained the battle.

Don Quixote, addressing himself to Camacho's party, "Hold, gentlemen," cried he, "it is not just thus with arms to redress the injuries of love. Love and war are the same thing, and stratagems and policy are as allowable in the one as in the other. Quiteria was designed for Basil, and he for her, by the unalterable decrees of Heaven. Camacho's riches may purchase him a bride, and more content elsewhere; and those whom Heaven has joined let no man put asunder; for I here solemnly declare, that he who first attempts it must pass through me, and this lance through him." At which he shook his lance in the air with so much vigour and dexterity, that he cast a sudden terror into those that beheld him, who did not know the threatening champion.

In short, Don Quixote's words, the curate's mediation, together with Quiteria's inconstancy, brought Camacho to a truce; and he then discreetly considered, that since Quiteria loved Basil before marriage, it was probable she would love him afterwards; and that, therefore, he had more reason to thank Heaven for so good a riddance than to repine at losing her. This thought, improved by some other considerations, brought both parties to a fair accommodation; and Camacho, to shew he did not resent the disappointment, blaming rather Quiteria's levity than Basil's policy, invited the whole company to stay and take share of what he had provided. But Basil, whose virtues, in spite of his poverty, had secured him many friends, drew away part of the company to attend him and his bride to her own town; and among the rest Don Quixote, whom they all honoured as a person of extraordinary worth and bravery. Poor Sancho followed his master with a heavy heart; he could not be reconciled to the thoughts of turning his back so soon upon the good cheer and jollity at Camacho's feast, and had a strange hankering after those pleasures which, though he left behind in reality, he yet carried along with him in mind.

The new-married couple entertained Don Quixote very nobly; they esteemed his wisdom equal to his valour, and thought him both a Cid in arms and a Cicero in arts. Basil then informed them that Quiteria knew nothing of his stratagem; but being a pure device of his own, he had made some of his nearest friends acquainted with it, that they should stand by him if occasion were, and bring him off upon the discovery of the trick. "It deserves a handsomer name," said Don Quixote, "since conducive to so good and honourable an end as the marriage of a loving couple. By the way, sir, you must know that the greatest obstacle to love is want, and a narrow fortune; for the continual bands and cements of mutual affection are joy, content, and comfort. These, managed by skilful hands, can make variety in the pleasures of wedlock, preparing the same thing always with some additional circumstance, to render it new and delightful. But when pressing necessity and indigence deprive us of those pleasures that prevent satiety, the yoke of matrimony is often found very galling, and the burden intolerable."

These words were chiefly directed by Don Quixote to Basil, to advise him by the way to give over those airy sports and exercises, which indeed might feed his youth with praise, but not his old age with bread; and to bethink himself of some grave and substantial employment that might afford him a competency, and something of a stock for his declining years. Then pursuing his discourse: "The honourable poor man," said he, "when he has a beautiful wife, is blessed with a jewel; he that deprives him of her robs him of his honour, and may be said to deprive him of his life. The woman that is beautiful, and keeps her honesty when her husband is poor, deserves to be crowned with laurel as the conquerors were of old. Beauty is a tempting bait, that attracts the eyes of all beholders; and the princely eagles, and the most high-flown birds, stoop to its pleasing lure. But when they find it in necessity, then kites and crows, and other ravenous birds, will all be grappling with the alluring prey. She that can withstand these dangerous attacks, well deserves to be the crown of her husband. However, sir, take this along with you, as the opinion of a wise man whose name I have forgot; he said, 'there was but one good woman in the world,' and his advice was, that every married man should think his own wife was she, as being the only way to live contented. For my own part, I need not make the application to myself, for I am not married, nor have I any thoughts that way; but if I had, it would not be a woman's fortune, but her character, should recommend her; for public reputation is the life of a lady's virtue, and the outward appearance of modesty is in one sense as good as the reality; since a private sin is not so prejudicial in this world as a public indecency."