CHAPTER LI
Of the Progress of Sancho's Government; and Other Such Entertaining Matters
THE thing that troubled Sancho most was not his manifold duties nor his judgments, but his appetite. It was as keen as ever, yet he got next to nothing to eat. The morning after he had made his round, they gave him only some water and a little conserve for breakfast, the doctor advising him that light food was the most nourishing for the wits, and especially to be recommended to people who were placed in responsible positions—such as governors, for instance. Thus poor Sancho was persuaded to submit to a process of starvation which was gradually making him regret, and finally curse, his ever having become governor.
He sat in judgment that day but a short time, and made a decision in an intricate case with so much good sense and wit that the majordomo was overwhelmed with admiration, and could not refrain from taking pity on the governor's stomach. So he stood up and announced, knowing it would have the Governor's immediate and unqualified sanction, that the session had come to an end for the morning; then turning to Sancho, he promised to give him a dinner that day that would please him.
Sancho was grateful in advance, and felt moved to thank him. "That is all I ask for," he declared: "fair play! Give me my dinner, and then let it rain cases and questions on me, and I shall despatch them in a twinkling." And since it had been arranged by the conspirators in the joke that this was to be the last day of Sancho Panza's reign as governor, the majordomo gave him the best dinner that he could.
Just as the Governor was finishing his repast a courier arrived with a letter from Don Quixote. The secretary read it aloud to him, and he listened attentively and respectfully to the wisdom and good and sound advice that his beloved Don Quixote gave him in the letter. All who heard it read were agreed that they had seldom had the fortune to hear such a well-worded and thoroughly sensible epistle; and Sancho was proud of the praise that was being bestowed on his former master, to whom he still was as devoted as ever.
The Governor withdrew with his secretary into his own room, and there he dictated at once his reply to Don Quixote's letter. In this he confided to him all that had happened on his island, the reforms he had undertaken, and the judgments he had handed down. He finished by asking the knight to kiss the hand of the sweet Duchess for him and tell her that she had not thrown it into a sack with a hole in it, as she would see in the end: meaning by this that he would show her how grateful he was as soon as he had an opportunity.
The courier returned to the ducal palace with the Governor's message; and Sancho spent the afternoon in making provisions for all sorts of beneficial improvements in his government, reducing prices on a number of necessaries, and confirming laws that tended to help the poor and needy, while they would incriminate those who were impostors, good-for-nothings, and vagabonds. Even to this day some of these laws are in existence there, and are called The constitutions of the great governor, Sancho Panza.