The majordomo was genuinely filled with admiration for all the excellent ideas and remarks of the new governor, particularly when he considered that he was a man without either education or culture; and he could not help admitting to himself that even a joke could sometimes become a reality, and that those who had played a joke on some one might live to find themselves the victims of the very same joke.
That night the Governor as usual made his rounds, accompanied by the majordomo and his whole staff, including the chronicler, who was to record the deeds of Governor Don Sancho Panza; and before the night was over he had given fresh proof of his wisdom, for he settled a quarrel between two gamblers and decided to break up gambling on his island. He kept a youth out of jail. And he restored a young girl, who wanted to see the world as a boy, to her father.
CHAPTER L
Wherein Is Set Forth How Governor Sancho Panza's Wife Received a Message and a Gift from the Duchess; and also What Befell the Page Who Carried the Letter to Teresa Panza
THE Duchess did not forget her promise, and she sent the page who had played the part of Dulcinea when the Devil entered a plea for her disenchantment, with Governor Sancho's letter and bundle to his wife. At the same time the Duchess entrusted him with a string of coral beads as a gift from herself to Teresa Panza, with which gift went a letter as well.
When the page reached the village of La Mancha he saw, on entering it, some women washing clothes in a brook; and he found that one of them was no other than the Governor's young daughter. She eagerly ran to the good-looking young man, and, breathless with excitement at the thought of his having news from her father, she skipped along in front of him until they had reached their little house.
Teresa Panza was spinning, and she came out in a gray petticoat, vigorous, sunburnt and healthy, and wanted to know what all the excitement was about. The page quickly jumped from his horse, thrust himself on his knees before her, and exclaimed to the bewildered woman: "Let me kiss your hand, Señora Doña Panza, as the lawful and only wife of Señor Don Sancho Panza, rightful governor of the island of Barataria."
But by this time the poor woman had got over her first surprise, and she bade him rise, saying that he should not do things like that, and that she was only a poor country woman, and the wife of a squire errant, not a governor. However, when the page had given her the letters and the gifts, her doubts were crushed, and she decided that Sancho's master must have given her husband the government he had promised him, the one that Sancho had been talking about all the time. And then she asked the page to read the letters to her, since she herself had not learned that art, although she could spin, she said.
When the page had finished reading the Duchess' letter, poor Teresa Panza was overcome with gratitude to the gracious lady who had made her husband, a poor illiterate booby, governor—and a good one besides—and who had deigned to ask her, humble woman that she was, for a couple of dozen or so of acorns.