CHAPTER III — OF THE LAUGHABLE CONVERSATION THAT PASSED BETWEEN DON QUIXOTE, SANCHO — PANZA, AND THE BACHELOR SAMSON CARRASCO

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Don Quixote remained very deep in thought, waiting for the bachelor
Carrasco, from whom he was to hear how he himself had been put into a
book as Sancho said; and he could not persuade himself that any such
history could be in existence, for the blood of the enemies he had
slain was not yet dry on the blade of his sword, and now they wanted to
make out that his mighty achievements were going about in print. For
all that, he fancied some sage, either a friend or an enemy, might, by
the aid of magic, have given them to the press; if a friend, in order
to magnify and exalt them above the most famous ever achieved by any
knight-errant; if an enemy, to bring them to naught and degrade them
below the meanest ever recorded of any low squire, though as he said to
himself, the achievements of squires never were recorded. If, however,
it were the fact that such a history were in existence, it must
necessarily, being the story of a knight-errant, be grandiloquent,
lofty, imposing, grand and true. With this he comforted himself
somewhat, though it made him uncomfortable to think that the author was
a Moor, judging by the title of “Cide;” and that no truth was to be
looked for from Moors, as they are all impostors, cheats, and schemers.
He was afraid he might have dealt with his love affairs in some
indecorous fashion, that might tend to the discredit and prejudice of
the purity of his lady Dulcinea del Toboso; he would have had him set
forth the fidelity and respect he had always observed towards her,
spurning queens, empresses, and damsels of all sorts, and keeping in
check the impetuosity of his natural impulses. Absorbed and wrapped up
in these and divers other cogitations, he was found by Sancho and
Carrasco, whom Don Quixote received with great courtesy.

The bachelor, though he was called Samson, was of no great bodily size,
but he was a very great wag; he was of a sallow complexion, but very
sharp-witted, somewhere about four-and-twenty years of age, with a
round face, a flat nose, and a large mouth, all indications of a
mischievous disposition and a love of fun and jokes; and of this he
gave a sample as soon as he saw Don Quixote, by falling on his knees
before him and saying, “Let me kiss your mightiness’s hand, Señor Don
Quixote of La Mancha, for, by the habit of St. Peter that I wear,
though I have no more than the first four orders, your worship is one
of the most famous knights-errant that have ever been, or will be, all
the world over. A blessing on Cide Hamete Benengeli, who has written
the history of your great deeds, and a double blessing on that
connoisseur who took the trouble of having it translated out of the
Arabic into our Castilian vulgar tongue for the universal entertainment
of the people!”

Don Quixote made him rise, and said, “So, then, it is true that there
is a history of me, and that it was a Moor and a sage who wrote it?”

“So true is it, señor,” said Samson, “that my belief is there are more
than twelve thousand volumes of the said history in print this very
day. Only ask Portugal, Barcelona, and Valencia, where they have been
printed, and moreover there is a report that it is being printed at
Antwerp, and I am persuaded there will not be a country or language in
which there will not be a translation of it.”

“One of the things,” here observed Don Quixote, “that ought to give
most pleasure to a virtuous and eminent man is to find himself in his
lifetime in print and in type, familiar in people’s mouths with a good
name; I say with a good name, for if it be the opposite, then there is
no death to be compared to it.”

“If it goes by good name and fame,” said the bachelor, “your worship
alone bears away the palm from all the knights-errant; for the Moor in
his own language, and the Christian in his, have taken care to set
before us your gallantry, your high courage in encountering dangers,
your fortitude in adversity, your patience under misfortunes as well as
wounds, the purity and continence of the platonic loves of your worship
and my lady Doña Dulcinea del Toboso—”

“I never heard my lady Dulcinea called Doña,” observed Sancho here;
“nothing more than the lady Dulcinea del Toboso; so here already the
history is wrong.”

“That is not an objection of any importance,” replied Carrasco.

“Certainly not,” said Don Quixote; “but tell me, señor bachelor, what
deeds of mine are they that are made most of in this history?”

“On that point,” replied the bachelor, “opinions differ, as tastes do;
some swear by the adventure of the windmills that your worship took to
be Briareuses and giants; others by that of the fulling mills; one
cries up the description of the two armies that afterwards took the
appearance of two droves of sheep; another that of the dead body on its
way to be buried at Segovia; a third says the liberation of the galley
slaves is the best of all, and a fourth that nothing comes up to the
affair with the Benedictine giants, and the battle with the valiant
Biscayan.”

“Tell me, señor bachelor,” said Sancho at this point, “does the
adventure with the Yanguesans come in, when our good Rocinante went
hankering after dainties?”

“The sage has left nothing in the ink-bottle,” replied Samson; “he
tells all and sets down everything, even to the capers that worthy
Sancho cut in the blanket.”

“I cut no capers in the blanket,” returned Sancho; “in the air I did,
and more of them than I liked.”

“There is no human history in the world, I suppose,” said Don Quixote,
“that has not its ups and downs, but more than others such as deal with
chivalry, for they can never be entirely made up of prosperous
adventures.”

“For all that,” replied the bachelor, “there are those who have read
the history who say they would have been glad if the author had left
out some of the countless cudgellings that were inflicted on Señor Don
Quixote in various encounters.”

“That’s where the truth of the history comes in,” said Sancho.

“At the same time they might fairly have passed them over in silence,”
observed Don Quixote; “for there is no need of recording events which
do not change or affect the truth of a history, if they tend to bring
the hero of it into contempt. Æneas was not in truth and earnest so
pious as Virgil represents him, nor Ulysses so wise as Homer describes
him.”

“That is true,” said Samson; “but it is one thing to write as a poet,
another to write as a historian; the poet may describe or sing things,
not as they were, but as they ought to have been; but the historian has
to write them down, not as they ought to have been, but as they were,
without adding anything to the truth or taking anything from it.”

“Well then,” said Sancho, “if this señor Moor goes in for telling the
truth, no doubt among my master’s drubbings mine are to be found; for
they never took the measure of his worship’s shoulders without doing
the same for my whole body; but I have no right to wonder at that, for,
as my master himself says, the members must share the pain of the
head.”

“You are a sly dog, Sancho,” said Don Quixote; “i’ faith, you have no
want of memory when you choose to remember.”

“If I were to try to forget the thwacks they gave me,” said Sancho, “my
weals would not let me, for they are still fresh on my ribs.”

“Hush, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “and don’t interrupt the bachelor,
whom I entreat to go on and tell all that is said about me in this
history.”

“And about me,” said Sancho, “for they say, too, that I am one of the
principal presonages in it.”

“Personages, not presonages, friend Sancho,” said Samson.

“What! Another word-catcher!” said Sancho; “if that’s to be the way we
shall not make an end in a lifetime.”

“May God shorten mine, Sancho,” returned the bachelor, “if you are not
the second person in the history, and there are even some who would
rather hear you talk than the cleverest in the whole book; though there
are some, too, who say you showed yourself over-credulous in believing
there was any possibility in the government of that island offered you
by Señor Don Quixote.”

“There is still sunshine on the wall,” said Don Quixote; “and when
Sancho is somewhat more advanced in life, with the experience that
years bring, he will be fitter and better qualified for being a
governor than he is at present.”

“By God, master,” said Sancho, “the island that I cannot govern with
the years I have, I’ll not be able to govern with the years of
Methuselah; the difficulty is that the said island keeps its distance
somewhere, I know not where; and not that there is any want of head in
me to govern it.”

“Leave it to God, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “for all will be and
perhaps better than you think; no leaf on the tree stirs but by God’s
will.”

“That is true,” said Samson; “and if it be God’s will, there will not
be any want of a thousand islands, much less one, for Sancho to
govern.”

“I have seen governors in these parts,” said Sancho, “that are not to
be compared to my shoe-sole; and for all that they are called ‘your
lordship’ and served on silver.”

“Those are not governors of islands,” observed Samson, “but of other
governments of an easier kind: those that govern islands must at least
know grammar.”

“I could manage the gram well enough,” said Sancho; “but for the mar I
have neither leaning nor liking, for I don’t know what it is; but
leaving this matter of the government in God’s hands, to send me
wherever it may be most to his service, I may tell you, señor bachelor
Samson Carrasco, it has pleased me beyond measure that the author of
this history should have spoken of me in such a way that what is said
of me gives no offence; for, on the faith of a true squire, if he had
said anything about me that was at all unbecoming an old Christian,
such as I am, the deaf would have heard of it.”

“That would be working miracles,” said Samson.

“Miracles or no miracles,” said Sancho, “let everyone mind how he
speaks or writes about people, and not set down at random the first
thing that comes into his head.”

“One of the faults they find with this history,” said the bachelor, “is
that its author inserted in it a novel called ‘The Ill-advised
Curiosity;’ not that it is bad or ill-told, but that it is out of place
and has nothing to do with the history of his worship Señor Don
Quixote.”

“I will bet the son of a dog has mixed the cabbages and the baskets,”
said Sancho.

“Then, I say,” said Don Quixote, “the author of my history was no sage,
but some ignorant chatterer, who, in a haphazard and heedless way, set
about writing it, let it turn out as it might, just as Orbaneja, the
painter of Úbeda, used to do, who, when they asked him what he was
painting, answered, ‘What it may turn out.’ Sometimes he would paint a
cock in such a fashion, and so unlike, that he had to write alongside
of it in Gothic letters, ‘This is a cock;’ and so it will be with my
history, which will require a commentary to make it intelligible.”

“No fear of that,” returned Samson, “for it is so plain that there is
nothing in it to puzzle over; the children turn its leaves, the young
people read it, the grown men understand it, the old folk praise it; in
a word, it is so thumbed, and read, and got by heart by people of all
sorts, that the instant they see any lean hack, they say, ‘There goes
Rocinante.’ And those that are most given to reading it are the pages,
for there is not a lord’s ante-chamber where there is not a ‘Don
Quixote’ to be found; one takes it up if another lays it down; this one
pounces upon it, and that begs for it. In short, the said history is
the most delightful and least injurious entertainment that has been
hitherto seen, for there is not to be found in the whole of it even the
semblance of an immodest word, or a thought that is other than
Catholic.”

“To write in any other way,” said Don Quixote, “would not be to write
truth, but falsehood, and historians who have recourse to falsehood
ought to be burned, like those who coin false money; and I know not
what could have led the author to have recourse to novels and
irrelevant stories, when he had so much to write about in mine; no
doubt he must have gone by the proverb ‘with straw or with hay, &c.,’
for by merely setting forth my thoughts, my sighs, my tears, my lofty
purposes, my enterprises, he might have made a volume as large, or
larger than all the works of El Tostado would make up. In fact, the
conclusion I arrive at, señor bachelor, is, that to write histories, or
books of any kind, there is need of great judgment and a ripe
understanding. To give expression to humour, and write in a strain of
graceful pleasantry, is the gift of great geniuses. The cleverest
character in comedy is the clown, for he who would make people take him
for a fool, must not be one. History is in a measure a sacred thing,
for it should be true, and where the truth is, there God is; but
notwithstanding this, there are some who write and fling books
broadcast on the world as if they were fritters.”

“There is no book so bad but it has something good in it,” said the
bachelor.

“No doubt of that,” replied Don Quixote; “but it often happens that
those who have acquired and attained a well-deserved reputation by
their writings, lose it entirely, or damage it in some degree, when
they give them to the press.”

“The reason of that,” said Samson, “is, that as printed works are
examined leisurely, their faults are easily seen; and the greater the
fame of the writer, the more closely are they scrutinised. Men famous
for their genius, great poets, illustrious historians, are always, or
most commonly, envied by those who take a particular delight and
pleasure in criticising the writings of others, without having produced
any of their own.”

“That is no wonder,” said Don Quixote; “for there are many divines who
are no good for the pulpit, but excellent in detecting the defects or
excesses of those who preach.”

“All that is true, Señor Don Quixote,” said Carrasco; “but I wish such
fault-finders were more lenient and less exacting, and did not pay so
much attention to the spots on the bright sun of the work they grumble
at; for if aliquando bonus dormitat Homerus, they should remember how
long he remained awake to shed the light of his work with as little
shade as possible; and perhaps it may be that what they find fault with
may be moles, that sometimes heighten the beauty of the face that bears
them; and so I say very great is the risk to which he who prints a book
exposes himself, for of all impossibilities the greatest is to write
one that will satisfy and please all readers.”

“That which treats of me must have pleased few,” said Don Quixote.

“Quite the contrary,” said the bachelor; “for, as _stultorum infinitum
est numerus_, innumerable are those who have relished the said history;
but some have brought a charge against the author’s memory, inasmuch as
he forgot to say who the thief was who stole Sancho’s Dapple; for it is
not stated there, but only to be inferred from what is set down, that
he was stolen, and a little farther on we see Sancho mounted on the
same ass, without any reappearance of it. They say, too, that he forgot
to state what Sancho did with those hundred crowns that he found in the
valise in the Sierra Morena, as he never alludes to them again, and
there are many who would be glad to know what he did with them, or what
he spent them on, for it is one of the serious omissions of the work.”

“Señor Samson, I am not in a humour now for going into accounts or
explanations,” said Sancho; “for there’s a sinking of the stomach come
over me, and unless I doctor it with a couple of sups of the old stuff
it will put me on the thorn of Santa Lucia. I have it at home, and my
old woman is waiting for me; after dinner I’ll come back, and will
answer you and all the world every question you may choose to ask, as
well about the loss of the ass as about the spending of the hundred
crowns;” and without another word or waiting for a reply he made off
home.

Don Quixote begged and entreated the bachelor to stay and do penance
with him. The bachelor accepted the invitation and remained, a couple
of young pigeons were added to the ordinary fare, at dinner they talked
chivalry, Carrasco fell in with his host’s humour, the banquet came to
an end, they took their afternoon sleep, Sancho returned, and their
conversation was resumed.

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CHAPTER IV.
IN WHICH SANCHO PANZA GIVES A SATISFACTORY REPLY TO THE DOUBTS AND
QUESTIONS OF THE BACHELOR SAMSON CARRASCO, TOGETHER WITH OTHER MATTERS
WORTH KNOWING AND TELLING

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Sancho came back to Don Quixote’s house, and returning to the late
subject of conversation, he said, “As to what Señor Samson said, that
he would like to know by whom, or how, or when my ass was stolen, I say
in reply that the same night we went into the Sierra Morena, flying
from the Holy Brotherhood after that unlucky adventure of the galley
slaves, and the other of the corpse that was going to Segovia, my
master and I ensconced ourselves in a thicket, and there, my master
leaning on his lance, and I seated on my Dapple, battered and weary
with the late frays we fell asleep as if it had been on four feather
mattresses; and I in particular slept so sound, that, whoever he was,
he was able to come and prop me up on four stakes, which he put under
the four corners of the pack-saddle in such a way that he left me
mounted on it, and took away Dapple from under me without my feeling
it.”

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“That is an easy matter,” said Don Quixote, “and it is no new
occurrence, for the same thing happened to Sacripante at the siege of
Albracca; the famous thief, Brunello, by the same contrivance, took his
horse from between his legs.”

“Day came,” continued Sancho, “and the moment I stirred the stakes gave
way and I fell to the ground with a mighty come down; I looked about
for the ass, but could not see him; the tears rushed to my eyes and I
raised such a lamentation that, if the author of our history has not
put it in, he may depend upon it he has left out a good thing. Some
days after, I know not how many, travelling with her ladyship the
Princess Micomicona, I saw my ass, and mounted upon him, in the dress
of a gipsy, was that Gines de Pasamonte, the great rogue and rascal
that my master and I freed from the chain.”

“That is not where the mistake is,” replied Samson; “it is, that before
the ass has turned up, the author speaks of Sancho as being mounted on
it.”

“I don’t know what to say to that,” said Sancho, “unless that the
historian made a mistake, or perhaps it might be a blunder of the
printer’s.”

“No doubt that’s it,” said Samson; “but what became of the hundred
crowns? Did they vanish?”

To which Sancho answered, “I spent them for my own good, and my wife’s,
and my children’s, and it is they that have made my wife bear so
patiently all my wanderings on highways and byways, in the service of
my master, Don Quixote; for if after all this time I had come back to
the house without a rap and without the ass, it would have been a poor
look-out for me; and if anyone wants to know anything more about me,
here I am, ready to answer the king himself in person; and it is no
affair of anyone’s whether I took or did not take, whether I spent or
did not spend; for the whacks that were given me in these journeys were
to be paid for in money, even if they were valued at no more than four
maravedis apiece, another hundred crowns would not pay me for half of
them. Let each look to himself and not try to make out white black, and
black white; for each of us is as God made him, aye, and often worse.”

“I will take care,” said Carrasco, “to impress upon the author of the
history that, if he prints it again, he must not forget what worthy
Sancho has said, for it will raise it a good span higher.”

“Is there anything else to correct in the history, señor bachelor?”
asked Don Quixote.

“No doubt there is,” replied he; “but not anything that will be of the
same importance as those I have mentioned.”

“Does the author promise a second part at all?” said Don Quixote.

“He does promise one,” replied Samson; “but he says he has not found
it, nor does he know who has got it; and we cannot say whether it will
appear or not; and so, on that head, as some say that no second part
has ever been good, and others that enough has been already written
about Don Quixote, it is thought there will be no second part; though
some, who are jovial rather than saturnine, say, ‘Let us have more
Quixotades, let Don Quixote charge and Sancho chatter, and no matter
what it may turn out, we shall be satisfied with that.’”

“And what does the author mean to do?” said Don Quixote.

“What?” replied Samson; “why, as soon as he has found the history which
he is now searching for with extraordinary diligence, he will at once
give it to the press, moved more by the profit that may accrue to him
from doing so than by any thought of praise.”

Whereat Sancho observed, “The author looks for money and profit, does
he? It will be a wonder if he succeeds, for it will be only hurry,
hurry, with him, like the tailor on Easter Eve; and works done in a
hurry are never finished as perfectly as they ought to be. Let master
Moor, or whatever he is, pay attention to what he is doing, and I and
my master will give him as much grouting ready to his hand, in the way
of adventures and accidents of all sorts, as would make up not only one
second part, but a hundred. The good man fancies, no doubt, that we are
fast asleep in the straw here, but let him hold up our feet to be shod
and he will see which foot it is we go lame on. All I say is, that if
my master would take my advice, we would be now afield, redressing
outrages and righting wrongs, as is the use and custom of good
knights-errant.”

Sancho had hardly uttered these words when the neighing of Rocinante
fell upon their ears, which neighing Don Quixote accepted as a happy
omen, and he resolved to make another sally in three or four days from
that time. Announcing his intention to the bachelor, he asked his
advice as to the quarter in which he ought to commence his expedition,
and the bachelor replied that in his opinion he ought to go to the
kingdom of Aragon, and the city of Saragossa, where there were to be
certain solemn joustings at the festival of St. George, at which he
might win renown above all the knights of Aragon, which would be
winning it above all the knights of the world. He commended his very
praiseworthy and gallant resolution, but admonished him to proceed with
greater caution in encountering dangers, because his life did not
belong to him, but to all those who had need of him to protect and aid
them in their misfortunes.

“There’s where it is, what I abominate, Señor Samson,” said Sancho
here; “my master will attack a hundred armed men as a greedy boy would
half a dozen melons. Body of the world, señor bachelor! there is a time
to attack and a time to retreat, and it is not to be always ‘Santiago,
and close Spain!’ Moreover, I have heard it said (and I think by my
master himself, if I remember rightly) that the mean of valour lies
between the extremes of cowardice and rashness; and if that be so, I
don’t want him to fly without having good reason, or to attack when the
odds make it better not. But, above all things, I warn my master that
if he is to take me with him it must be on the condition that he is to
do all the fighting, and that I am not to be called upon to do anything
except what concerns keeping him clean and comfortable; in this I will
dance attendance on him readily; but to expect me to draw sword, even
against rascally churls of the hatchet and hood, is idle. I don’t set
up to be a fighting man, Señor Samson, but only the best and most loyal
squire that ever served knight-errant; and if my master Don Quixote, in
consideration of my many faithful services, is pleased to give me some
island of the many his worship says one may stumble on in these parts,
I will take it as a great favour; and if he does not give it to me, I
was born like everyone else, and a man must not live in dependence on
anyone except God; and what is more, my bread will taste as well, and
perhaps even better, without a government than if I were a governor;
and how do I know but that in these governments the devil may have
prepared some trip for me, to make me lose my footing and fall and
knock my grinders out? Sancho I was born and Sancho I mean to die. But
for all that, if heaven were to make me a fair offer of an island or
something else of the kind, without much trouble and without much risk,
I am not such a fool as to refuse it; for they say, too, ‘when they
offer thee a heifer, run with a halter; and ‘when good luck comes to
thee, take it in.’”

“Brother Sancho,” said Carrasco, “you have spoken like a professor;
but, for all that, put your trust in God and in Señor Don Quixote, for
he will give you a kingdom, not to say an island.”

“It is all the same, be it more or be it less,” replied Sancho; “though
I can tell Señor Carrasco that my master would not throw the kingdom he
might give me into a sack all in holes; for I have felt my own pulse
and I find myself sound enough to rule kingdoms and govern islands; and
I have before now told my master as much.”

“Take care, Sancho,” said Samson; “honours change manners, and perhaps
when you find yourself a governor you won’t know the mother that bore
you.”

“That may hold good of those that are born in the ditches,” said
Sancho, “not of those who have the fat of an old Christian four fingers
deep on their souls, as I have. Nay, only look at my disposition, is
that likely to show ingratitude to anyone?”

“God grant it,” said Don Quixote; “we shall see when the government
comes; and I seem to see it already.”

He then begged the bachelor, if he were a poet, to do him the favour of
composing some verses for him conveying the farewell he meant to take
of his lady Dulcinea del Toboso, and to see that a letter of her name
was placed at the beginning of each line, so that, at the end of the
verses, “Dulcinea del Toboso” might be read by putting together the
first letters. The bachelor replied that although he was not one of the
famous poets of Spain, who were, they said, only three and a half, he
would not fail to compose the required verses; though he saw a great
difficulty in the task, as the letters which made up the name were
seventeen; so, if he made four ballad stanzas of four lines each, there
would be a letter over, and if he made them of five, what they called
decimas or redondillas, there were three letters short; nevertheless he
would try to drop a letter as well as he could, so that the name
“Dulcinea del Toboso” might be got into four ballad stanzas.

“It must be, by some means or other,” said Don Quixote, “for unless the
name stands there plain and manifest, no woman would believe the verses
were made for her.”

They agreed upon this, and that the departure should take place in
three days from that time. Don Quixote charged the bachelor to keep it
a secret, especially from the curate and Master Nicholas, and from his
niece and the housekeeper, lest they should prevent the execution of
his praiseworthy and valiant purpose. Carrasco promised all, and then
took his leave, charging Don Quixote to inform him of his good or evil
fortunes whenever he had an opportunity; and thus they bade each other
farewell, and Sancho went away to make the necessary preparations for
their expedition.

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CHAPTER V.
OF THE SHREWD AND DROLL CONVERSATION THAT PASSED BETWEEN SANCHO PANZA
AND HIS WIFE TERESA PANZA, AND OTHER MATTERS WORTHY OF BEING DULY
RECORDED

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The translator of this history, when he comes to write this fifth
chapter, says that he considers it apocryphal, because in it Sancho
Panza speaks in a style unlike that which might have been expected from
his limited intelligence, and says things so subtle that he does not
think it possible he could have conceived them; however, desirous of
doing what his task imposed upon him, he was unwilling to leave it
untranslated, and therefore he went on to say:

Sancho came home in such glee and spirits that his wife noticed his
happiness a bowshot off, so much so that it made her ask him, “What
have you got, Sancho friend, that you are so glad?”

To which he replied, “Wife, if it were God’s will, I should be very
glad not to be so well pleased as I show myself.”

“I don’t understand you, husband,” said she, “and I don’t know what you
mean by saying you would be glad, if it were God’s will, not to be well
pleased; for, fool as I am, I don’t know how one can find pleasure in
not having it.”

“Hark ye, Teresa,” replied Sancho, “I am glad because I have made up my
mind to go back to the service of my master Don Quixote, who means to
go out a third time to seek for adventures; and I am going with him
again, for my necessities will have it so, and also the hope that
cheers me with the thought that I may find another hundred crowns like
those we have spent; though it makes me sad to have to leave thee and
the children; and if God would be pleased to let me have my daily
bread, dry-shod and at home, without taking me out into the byways and
cross-roads—and he could do it at small cost by merely willing it—it is
clear my happiness would be more solid and lasting, for the happiness I
have is mingled with sorrow at leaving thee; so that I was right in
saying I would be glad, if it were God’s will, not to be well pleased.”

“Look here, Sancho,” said Teresa; “ever since you joined on to a
knight-errant you talk in such a roundabout way that there is no
understanding you.”

“It is enough that God understands me, wife,” replied Sancho; “for he
is the understander of all things; that will do; but mind, sister, you
must look to Dapple carefully for the next three days, so that he may
be fit to take arms; double his feed, and see to the pack-saddle and
other harness, for it is not to a wedding we are bound, but to go round
the world, and play at give and take with giants and dragons and
monsters, and hear hissings and roarings and bellowings and howlings;
and even all this would be lavender, if we had not to reckon with
Yanguesans and enchanted Moors.”

“I know well enough, husband,” said Teresa, “that squires-errant don’t
eat their bread for nothing, and so I will be always praying to our
Lord to deliver you speedily from all that hard fortune.”

“I can tell you, wife,” said Sancho, “if I did not expect to see myself
governor of an island before long, I would drop down dead on the spot.”

“Nay, then, husband,” said Teresa; “let the hen live, though it be with
her pip, live, and let the devil take all the governments in the world;
you came out of your mother’s womb without a government, you have lived
until now without a government, and when it is God’s will you will go,
or be carried, to your grave without a government. How many there are
in the world who live without a government, and continue to live all
the same, and are reckoned in the number of the people. The best sauce
in the world is hunger, and as the poor are never without that, they
always eat with a relish. But mind, Sancho, if by good luck you should
find yourself with some government, don’t forget me and your children.
Remember that Sanchico is now full fifteen, and it is right he should
go to school, if his uncle the abbot has a mind to have him trained for
the Church. Consider, too, that your daughter Mari-Sancha will not die
of grief if we marry her; for I have my suspicions that she is as eager
to get a husband as you to get a government; and, after all, a daughter
looks better ill married than well whored.”

“By my faith,” replied Sancho, “if God brings me to get any sort of a
government, I intend, wife, to make such a high match for Mari-Sancha
that there will be no approaching her without calling her ‘my lady.”

“Nay, Sancho,” returned Teresa; “marry her to her equal, that is the
safest plan; for if you put her out of wooden clogs into high-heeled
shoes, out of her grey flannel petticoat into hoops and silk gowns, out
of the plain ‘Marica’ and ‘thou,’ into ‘Doña So-and-so’ and ‘my lady,’
the girl won’t know where she is, and at every turn she will fall into
a thousand blunders that will show the thread of her coarse homespun
stuff.”

“Tut, you fool,” said Sancho; “it will be only to practise it for two
or three years; and then dignity and decorum will fit her as easily as
a glove; and if not, what matter? Let her be ‘my lady,’ and never mind
what happens.”

“Keep to your own station, Sancho,” replied Teresa; “don’t try to raise
yourself higher, and bear in mind the proverb that says, ‘wipe the nose
of your neigbbour’s son, and take him into your house.’ A fine thing it
would be, indeed, to marry our Maria to some great count or grand
gentleman, who, when the humour took him, would abuse her and call her
clown-bred and clodhopper’s daughter and spinning wench. I have not
been bringing up my daughter for that all this time, I can tell you,
husband. Do you bring home money, Sancho, and leave marrying her to my
care; there is Lope Tocho, Juan Tocho’s son, a stout, sturdy young
fellow that we know, and I can see he does not look sour at the girl;
and with him, one of our own sort, she will be well married, and we
shall have her always under our eyes, and be all one family, parents
and children, grandchildren and sons-in-law, and the peace and blessing
of God will dwell among us; so don’t you go marrying her in those
courts and grand palaces where they won’t know what to make of her, or
she what to make of herself.”

“Why, you idiot and wife for Barabbas,” said Sancho, “what do you mean
by trying, without why or wherefore, to keep me from marrying my
daughter to one who will give me grandchildren that will be called
‘your lordship’? Look ye, Teresa, I have always heard my elders say
that he who does not know how to take advantage of luck when it comes
to him, has no right to complain if it gives him the go-by; and now
that it is knocking at our door, it will not do to shut it out; let us
go with the favouring breeze that blows upon us.”

It is this sort of talk, and what Sancho says lower down, that made the
translator of the history say he considered this chapter apocryphal.

“Don’t you see, you animal,” continued Sancho, “that it will be well
for me to drop into some profitable government that will lift us out of
the mire, and marry Mari-Sancha to whom I like; and you yourself will
find yourself called ‘Doña Teresa Panza,’ and sitting in church on a
fine carpet and cushions and draperies, in spite and in defiance of all
the born ladies of the town? No, stay as you are, growing neither
greater nor less, like a tapestry figure—Let us say no more about it,
for Sanchica shall be a countess, say what you will.”

“Are you sure of all you say, husband?” replied Teresa. “Well, for all
that, I am afraid this rank of countess for my daughter will be her
ruin. You do as you like, make a duchess or a princess of her, but I
can tell you it will not be with my will and consent. I was always a
lover of equality, brother, and I can’t bear to see people give
themselves airs without any right. They called me Teresa at my baptism,
a plain, simple name, without any additions or tags or fringes of Dons
or Doñas; Cascajo was my father’s name, and as I am your wife, I am
called Teresa Panza, though by right I ought to be called Teresa
Cascajo; but ‘kings go where laws like,’ and I am content with this
name without having the ‘Don’ put on top of it to make it so heavy that
I cannot carry it; and I don’t want to make people talk about me when
they see me go dressed like a countess or governor’s wife; for they
will say at once, ‘See what airs the slut gives herself! Only yesterday
she was always spinning flax, and used to go to mass with the tail of
her petticoat over her head instead of a mantle, and there she goes
to-day in a hooped gown with her broaches and airs, as if we didn’t
know her!’ If God keeps me in my seven senses, or five, or whatever
number I have, I am not going to bring myself to such a pass; go you,
brother, and be a government or an island man, and swagger as much as
you like; for by the soul of my mother, neither my daughter nor I are
going to stir a step from our village; a respectable woman should have
a broken leg and keep at home; and to be busy at something is a
virtuous damsel’s holiday; be off to your adventures along with your
Don Quixote, and leave us to our misadventures, for God will mend them
for us according as we deserve it. I don’t know, I’m sure, who fixed
the ‘Don’ to him, what neither his father nor grandfather ever had.”

“I declare thou hast a devil of some sort in thy body!” said Sancho.
“God help thee, what a lot of things thou hast strung together, one
after the other, without head or tail! What have Cascajo, and the
broaches and the proverbs and the airs, to do with what I say? Look
here, fool and dolt (for so I may call you, when you don’t understand
my words, and run away from good fortune), if I had said that my
daughter was to throw herself down from a tower, or go roaming the
world, as the Infanta Doña Urraca wanted to do, you would be right in
not giving way to my will; but if in an instant, in less than the
twinkling of an eye, I put the ‘Don’ and ‘my lady’ on her back, and
take her out of the stubble, and place her under a canopy, on a dais,
and on a couch, with more velvet cushions than all the Almohades of
Morocco ever had in their family, why won’t you consent and fall in
with my wishes?”

“Do you know why, husband?” replied Teresa; “because of the proverb
that says ‘who covers thee, discovers thee.’ At the poor man people
only throw a hasty glance; on the rich man they fix their eyes; and if
the said rich man was once on a time poor, it is then there is the
sneering and the tattle and spite of backbiters; and in the streets
here they swarm as thick as bees.”

“Look here, Teresa,” said Sancho, “and listen to what I am now going to
say to you; maybe you never heard it in all your life; and I do not
give my own notions, for what I am about to say are the opinions of his
reverence the preacher, who preached in this town last Lent, and who
said, if I remember rightly, that all things present that our eyes
behold, bring themselves before us, and remain and fix themselves on
our memory much better and more forcibly than things past.”

These observations which Sancho makes here are the other ones on
account of which the translator says he regards this chapter as
apocryphal, inasmuch as they are beyond Sancho’s capacity.

“Whence it arises,” he continued, “that when we see any person well
dressed and making a figure with rich garments and retinue of servants,
it seems to lead and impel us perforce to respect him, though memory
may at the same moment recall to us some lowly condition in which we
have seen him, but which, whether it may have been poverty or low
birth, being now a thing of the past, has no existence; while the only
thing that has any existence is what we see before us; and if this
person whom fortune has raised from his original lowly state (these
were the very words the padre used) to his present height of
prosperity, be well bred, generous, courteous to all, without seeking
to vie with those whose nobility is of ancient date, depend upon it,
Teresa, no one will remember what he was, and everyone will respect
what he is, except indeed the envious, from whom no fair fortune is
safe.”

“I do not understand you, husband,” replied Teresa; “do as you like,
and don’t break my head with any more speechifying and rethoric; and if
you have revolved to do what you say—”

“Resolved, you should say, woman,” said Sancho, “not revolved.”

“Don’t set yourself to wrangle with me, husband,” said Teresa; “I speak
as God pleases, and don’t deal in out-of-the-way phrases; and I say if
you are bent upon having a government, take your son Sancho with you,
and teach him from this time on how to hold a government; for sons
ought to inherit and learn the trades of their fathers.”

“As soon as I have the government,” said Sancho, “I will send for him
by post, and I will send thee money, of which I shall have no lack, for
there is never any want of people to lend it to governors when they
have not got it; and do thou dress him so as to hide what he is and
make him look what he is to be.”

“You send the money,” said Teresa, “and I’ll dress him up for you as
fine as you please.”

“Then we are agreed that our daughter is to be a countess,” said
Sancho.

“The day that I see her a countess,” replied Teresa, “it will be the
same to me as if I was burying her; but once more I say do as you
please, for we women are born to this burden of being obedient to our
husbands, though they be dogs;” and with this she began to weep in
earnest, as if she already saw Sanchica dead and buried.

Sancho consoled her by saying that though he must make her a countess,
he would put it off as long as possible. Here their conversation came
to an end, and Sancho went back to see Don Quixote, and make
arrangements for their departure.

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