Four days with the Knight of the Green Coat

A knight errant's life is mostly road and weather, and a good bed is an adventure in itself. I spent four days in the house of Don Diego de Miranda, the Knight of the Green Coat, after the affair of the lions, and I set down an account of them so that other knights may know what hospitality looks like when it is done properly.

The house is a gentleman's house of the village sort, broad and low, with his arms carved in rough stone over the gate, a wine cellar under the courtyard, and a row of great earthenware jars along the porch. The jars were made in El Toboso. I stopped in front of them and recited some verses about the sweet keepsakes of a lost love, and Don Diego's household stared at me for some time. I could not help it. Even the pottery of that town wounds me.

His wife, Doña Cristina, received me with great courtesy and no visible alarm, which is rarer than you would think. I had taken off my armour and appeared in chamois-leather breeches, a doublet stained with rust, and a falling collar; I washed my face five or six times and the water still came away the colour of whey, which Sancho said was the curds and I said was the dust of glory.

01 A poet in the house

The son of the house, Don Lorenzo, is about eighteen and has studied six years at Salamanca. His father despairs of him, because instead of law or theology he wishes to spend his life on verses. I spoke to the young man privately. I told him that poetry is a tender maiden whom all the other sciences should serve and adorn, but who must not be hawked in the street, nor written to order, nor made to sneer at anyone. I asked him to recite something. He gave me a gloss on four lines of an old song, and then a sonnet on Pyramus and Thisbe, and I declared both of them worthy of any academy in the world.

He told me afterwards, with some hesitation, that he had heard I was mad. I answered that he had been misinformed, and pointed out that a madman could not have judged his sonnet so precisely. He seemed to find this convincing. I advised him, if he wished to be famous, to take up knight errantry, which is the best road to the stars, but I saw from his face that he would stay with verses, and I respect that. A man must follow the road that calls him.

02 Four tables

Don Diego's table is clean, plentiful and sensible, without show. Sancho, who had been living on acorns, onions and whey, was very quiet for four days, which is how I know he was happy. The cook took a liking to him, and he spent much of the time in the kitchen discussing stews, on which he is a better authority than on governing islands.

Don Diego himself told me how he lives. He hunts a little without hawks or hounds, reads good books and not many, hears Mass daily, gives to the poor without trumpets, makes peace among his quarrelling neighbours, and does not gossip. I told Sancho that this was what a good Christian life looks like, and Sancho said he had never thought to see a saint in a green coat. I praised Don Diego's life with all my heart. And yet I could not stay. A tranquil house is a fine thing for a gentleman, but the world is full of wrongs and few people are riding out to set them right.

When I left on the fourth morning, Don Diego and his son both tried to persuade me to stay longer, and I am grateful for it. I gave Don Lorenzo some final counsel about the dignity of poetry. Don Diego filled Sancho's saddlebags. I suspect, from the look the two of them exchanged at the gate, that they discussed me after I had gone. I hope they did. A knight wishes to be talked about.

Cide Hamete, here is a chapter with no giants in it. Put it in anyway. The world should know there are still good houses in La Mancha.