The galley slaves

On the twenty-seventh of August, wearing Mambrino's helmet, I raised my eyes and saw coming along the king's highway some twelve men on foot, strung by the neck on a great iron chain like beads on a rosary, and all of them with manacles on their hands. With them came two men on horseback, armed with muskets, and two on foot with javelins and swords.

Sancho said at once: “That is a chain of galley slaves, people forced by the king to go to the galleys.”

“Forced?” I said. “Is it possible that the king uses force on anyone?”

Sancho said he did not mean that exactly. He meant they were men condemned for their crimes to serve the king in the galleys, by force. But I had heard the word, and it was enough. Wherever there is force, there is work for my office, which is to undo wrongs and to help the wretched.

01 I take their statements

I rode up and asked the guards, very courteously, to tell me why these men were being taken in that fashion. The guard on horseback said they were His Majesty's galley slaves, and that was all there was to know. I asked if I might question the prisoners themselves. He said I could if I liked, so long as I did not take all day about it.

The first said he was going for being in love. I asked if that was all. He said it was a basket of linen he had been in love with, and he had embraced it so tightly that the law had to pry it from him. Three years. The second would say nothing at all, because, the others explained, he had confessed under torture, and among them it is a disgrace to sing, which is their word for confessing. Six years and two hundred lashes. The third said he had lacked ten ducats at the right moment to grease the notary's pen and the attorney's wits, or he would be in the middle of Toledo at that very hour, instead of on this road like a hound on a leash. The fourth was an old man with a white beard who wept so much that he could not speak, and I pitied him most of all.

The last was a man of about thirty, good-looking except that he squinted a little, and chained much more heavily than the others, with an iron on his leg and a collar on his neck. The guards said he alone had committed more crimes than all the rest together, and that he was the famous Ginés de Pasamonte. He corrected them. He said he was writing his life in his own hand, that it was so good that it would put to shame all the books of rogues ever written, and that he had pawned the manuscript in prison for two hundred reales. I asked whether it was finished. He said, how could it be finished, when his life was not?

02 A speech, and a deliverance

When I had heard them all I addressed the guards. I said that although these men had been punished for their faults, the punishments did not please them, and they went against their will; that some might have been condemned for want of courage under torture, or for want of money, or for want of favour, or by the bad judgment of a judge. I said it seemed hard to make slaves of those whom God and nature made free, and that there would be no lack of others to punish them if they had done wrong, since there is a God in heaven who does not forget to punish the bad and reward the good. I asked the guards politely to let them go.

The guard laughed and told me to straighten the basin on my head and go on my way, and not go looking for three feet on a cat. That was enough. I charged him so quickly that he had no time to defend himself, and he fell from his horse wounded, and it was the one with the musket. The other guards drew their swords and came at me, and the slaves, seeing their chance, began to break their chain. Sancho, I record with gratitude, helped Ginés de Pasamonte off with his irons, and Ginés was the first to leap free and seize the fallen musket, and with that the guards ran off across the fields, pursued by stones.

Sancho was very worried. He said the guards would run to the Holy Brotherhood, and they would ring the bells, and the troopers would come after us, and we had better leave for the mountains at once. I told him I knew what had to be done. First I called the freed prisoners round me and gave them their orders.

I told them that it is the duty of well-born people to give thanks for benefits received, and that I desired them, laden with the chain I had taken off their necks, to set out at once for the city of El Toboso, and there to present themselves before the lady Dulcinea del Toboso, and tell her that her knight, he of the Rueful Countenance, sent them to her, and recount to her every point of this adventure. After that they might go where they pleased.

Ginés answered for them all. He said that what I asked was impossible, because they could not go on the roads together but had to scatter one by one, each hiding in the earth's bowels so as not to be found by the Brotherhood. He said that if I liked, they could change the visit to the lady Dulcinea into a certain number of Hail Marys and Creeds, which they would say for my intention, and that this could be done by night or by day, running or resting, in peace or in war. But to put the chain on again and walk to El Toboso was to look for pears on an elm tree.

I lost my temper, I confess, and told him that he alone would go, with his tail between his legs and the whole chain on his back. It was a mistake. Ginés, who was not long-suffering, winked at his companions, and they stepped back and began to rain stones on me so thickly that I could not cover myself with my shield, and poor Rocinante cared no more for the spur than if he were made of brass. Sancho hid behind his donkey. I fell. A student among them, if they had students, took the basin off my head and struck me with it three or four times on the shoulders and then beat it on the ground until it was nearly flattened. They took a tunic I wore over my armour, and would have taken my stockings if the greaves had not stopped them. They took Sancho's coat and left him in his shirt. Then they divided the spoils and went off each his own way, more concerned to escape the Brotherhood than to carry chains to El Toboso.

We were left alone: the donkey and Rocinante, Sancho and I. The donkey stood with his head down, thoughtful, shaking his ears now and then as if the stones were still falling. Rocinante lay beside me, for he too had been knocked down. Sancho, in his shirt, was terrified of the Holy Brotherhood. I lay there very much aggrieved at having been so badly treated by those to whom I had done so much good.

“I have always heard it said, Sancho,” I told him, “that to do good to base men is to pour water into the sea.” Sancho said that he had always heard it said too, and that he had said it to me, more or less, at the start. I said that this time I would take his advice and withdraw to the mountains, but that he must never tell anyone I did it from fear. He promised. I am fairly sure he has told everyone.

For the sage who keeps my record: I freed them because they were in chains, and I would do it again. Write that I knew what they were, and did it anyway.