Miguel Cervantes

THE HISTORY OF DON QUIXOTE DE LA MANCHA
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CHAPTER XVI.

How the Priest and the Barber proceeded in their project; with other things worthy of being related.

The barber liked well the priest's contrivance, and they immediately began to carry it into execution. They borrowed a petticoat and head-dress of the landlady; and the barber made himself a huge beard of the tail of a pied ox, in which the innkeeper used to hang his comb. The hostess having asked them for what purpose they wanted those things, the priest gave her a brief account of Don Quixote's insanity, and the necessity of that disguise to draw him from his present retreat. The host and hostess immediately conjectured that this was the same person who had once been their guest, and the master of the blanketed squire; and they related to the priest what had passed between them, without omitting what Sancho had been so careful to conceal. In the mean time the landlady equipped the priest to admiration: she put him on a cloth petticoat all pinked and slashed, and a corset of green velvet with a border of white satin. The [Pg 89] priest would not consent to wear a woman's head-dress, but put on a little white quilted cap, which he used as a night-cap, and bound one of his garters of black taffeta about his forehead, and with the other made a kind of veil, which covered his face and beard very well. He then pulled his hat over his face, which was so large that it served him for an umbrella; and wrapping his cloak around him, he got upon his mule sideways like a woman. The barber mounted also, with a beard that reached to his girdle, of a colour between sorrel and white, being, as before said, made of the tail of a pied ox.

But scarcely had they got out of the inn when the curate began to think that it was indecent for a priest to be so accoutred, although for so good a purpose; and, acquainting the barber with his scruples, he begged him to exchange apparel, as it would better become him to personate the distressed damsel, and he would himself act the squire, as being a less profanation of his dignity.

They now set forward on their journey; but first they told Sancho that their disguise was of the utmost importance towards disengaging his master from the miserable life he had chosen; and that he must by no means tell him who they were; and if he should inquire, as no doubt he would, whether he had delivered the letter to Dulcinea, he should say he had; and that she, not being able to read or write, had answered by word of mouth, and commanded the knight, on pain of her displeasure, to repair to her immediately upon an affair of much importance: for, with this, and what they intended to say themselves, they should certainly reconcile him to a better mode of life, and put him in the way of soon becoming an emperor or a king; as to an archbishop, he had nothing to fear on that subject. Sancho listened to all this, (...)

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