Camacho's wedding

On the road from Don Diego's house we met some students and farmers who told us that in their village the next day the rich Camacho was to marry the fair Quiteria, and that the wedding would be the grandest ever seen in those parts. They told us, too, of a young man called Basilio, Quiteria's neighbour since childhood, who loved her and was loved by her, but was poor, and so had been passed over by her father for the man with the flocks and fields. I heard this and my sympathies were engaged at once. I have always held that love should not be weighed on the same scales as wool.

We arrived that evening. The meadow outside the village had been roofed over with boughs, and under them the whole place was lit up like a city, with lamps hung in the trees and music coming from every direction. Sancho stood in the middle of it all and did not speak for a long time. Then he said, very quietly, that he could smell it from here, and that he believed he had died and was being rewarded for his patience.

01 Sancho's inventory

I record what Sancho saw, since he went round it all the next morning as carefully as a tax collector, and recited it to me afterwards with his eyes shining. I have checked his figures against my own memory and they are, for once, not exaggerated.

One of the cooks, seeing Sancho's face, gave him a pan and told him to skim himself a little something from the stew. Sancho came back with three hens and two geese. He sat under a tree with Dapple and ate them and said, between mouthfuls, that a man who has had this has had everything, and that Camacho was clearly a great nobleman. I reminded him that Basilio was the better man. He said that might be so, but that Basilio's kitchen was not in evidence.

02 Basilio's stratagem

After the dances and a masque in which Love and Wealth fought for a castle (Wealth won by throwing a gold ball at it, which I thought poor allegory), the bride arrived with her ladies, very beautiful in velvet and coral, and the priest stood ready. Then from the crowd came Basilio, in a black coat, carrying a staff, and he called out to Quiteria that since she had chosen another he would remove himself from her way. And he pulled a short blade from his staff, set the hilt on the ground, and fell upon it, so that the point stood out of his back.

The whole wedding rushed to him. Lying in his blood, he begged that before he died Quiteria would give him her hand as his wife, so that he might die happy and she could then marry Camacho as a widow with a clean conscience. Camacho, a sensible man, agreed, reasoning that the delay would be short. Quiteria knelt and gave Basilio her hand, the priest married them, and the moment the blessing was spoken Basilio jumped up as healthy as a trout and pulled out the blade, which had gone through a little tube of iron filled with blood fixed to his side.

“A miracle!” cried some. “A trick!” cried others, and Camacho's friends drew their swords. I rode Rocinante between the two parties with my lance couched and declared that love and war are alike, that in both the stratagem is lawful, and that what God and the Church had joined no man there should part. Quiteria, I said, belonged to Basilio, and Basilio to Quiteria, and Camacho was rich enough to buy himself joy in some other market.

I am pleased to say that Camacho took this very handsomely. He put up his sword, said that if Quiteria had loved Basilio all along he was well rid of a wife who did not love him, and commanded that the feast go on as if it were his own wedding still. Basilio and his bride left for their village, and I went with them as their guest, which cost Sancho dearly. He looked back at those six pots the way Lot's wife looked back at the city.

Learned Cide Hamete, record that the knight defended true love with his lance on that day. Record also, if you must, that his squire defended the stew with a ladle. Both stood firm.