“So I should have done,” said Sancho,
“if I had not got it by heart when your worship
read it to me, so that I repeated it to a sacristan,
who copied it out for me from hearing it, so exactly
that he said in all the days of his life, though he
had read many a letter of excommunication, he had
never seen or read so pretty a letter as that.”
“And hast thou got it still in thy memory, Sancho?”
said Don Quixote.
“No, senor,” replied Sancho, “for
as soon as I had repeated it, seeing there was no
further use for it, I set about forgetting it; and
if I recollect any of it, it is that about ’Scrubbing,’I
mean to say ‘Sovereign Lady,’ and the
end ’Yours till death, the Knight of the Rueful
Countenance;’ and between these two I put into
it more than three hundred ‘my souls’
and ‘my life’s’ and ’my eyes.”
OF THE DELECTABLE DISCUSSION BETWEEN DON QUIXOTE AND SANCHO PANZA, HIS
SQUIRE, TOGETHER WITH OTHER INCIDENTS
“All that is not unsatisfactory to me,”
said Don Quixote. “Go on; thou didst reach
her; and what was that queen of beauty doing?
Surely thou didst find her stringing pearls, or embroidering
some device in gold thread for this her enslaved knight.”
“I did not,” said Sancho, “but I
found her winnowing two bushels of wheat in the yard
of her house.”
“Then depend upon it,” said Don Quixote,
“the grains of that wheat were pearls when touched
by her hands; and didst thou look, friend? was it
white wheat or brown?”
“It was neither, but red,” said Sancho.
“Then I promise thee,” said Don Quixote,
“that, winnowed by her hands, beyond a doubt
the bread it made was of the whitest; but go on; when
thou gavest her my letter, did she kiss it? Did
she place it on her head? Did she perform any
ceremony befitting it, or what did she do?”
“When I went to give it to her,” replied
Sancho, “she was hard at it swaying from side
to side with a lot of wheat she had in the sieve, and
she said to me, ’Lay the letter, friend, on the
top of that sack, for I cannot read it until I have
done sifting all this.”
“Discreet lady!” said Don Quixote; “that
was in order to read it at her leisure and enjoy it;
proceed, Sancho; while she was engaged in her occupation
what converse did she hold with thee? What did
she ask about me, and what answer didst thou give?
Make haste; tell me all, and let not an atom be left
behind in the ink-bottle.”
“She asked me nothing,” said Sancho; “but
I told her how your worship was left doing penance
in her service, naked from the waist up, in among
these mountains like a savage, sleeping on the ground,
not eating bread off a tablecloth nor combing your
beard, weeping and cursing your fortune.”
“In saying I cursed my fortune thou saidst wrong,”
said Don Quixote; “for rather do I bless it
and shall bless it all the days of my life for having
made me worthy of aspiring to love so lofty a lady
as Dulcinea del Toboso.”
