The Whole Region Begins To Reek Of Cervantean Memories.
Ten miles from
the station of Argamasilla is the village where he imagined, and the
inhabitants believe, Don Quixote to have been born.
Somewhere among
these little towns Cervantes himself was thrown into prison for
presuming to attempt collecting their rents when the people did not want
to pay them. This is what I seem to remember having read, but heaven
knows where, or if. What is certain is that almost before I was aware we
were leaving the neighborhood of Valdepenas, where we saw men with
donkeys gathering grapes and letting the donkeys browse on the vine
leaves. Then we were mounting among the foothills of the Sierra Morena,
not without much besetting trouble of mind because of those certain
circles and squares of stone on the nearer and farther slopes which we
have since somehow determined were sheep-folds. They abounded almost to
the very scene of those capers which Don Quixote cut on the mountainside
to testify his love for Dulcinea del Toboso, to the great scandal of
Sancho Panza riding away to give his letter to the lady, but unable to
bear the sight of the knight skipping on the rocks in a single garment.
III
In the forests about befell all those adventures with the mad Cardenio
and the wronged Dorothea, both self-banished to the wilderness through
the perfidy of the same false friend and faithless lover. The episodes
which end so well, and which form, I think, the heart of the wonderful
romance, have, from the car windows, the fittest possible setting; but
suddenly the scene changes, and you are among aspects of nature as
savagely wild as any in that new western land where the countrymen of
Cervantes found a New Spain, just as the countrymen of Shakespeare found
a New England.
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