Of What Passed Between Don Quixote and His Squire, Together with Other Very Notable Incidents
AS soon as the housekeeper heard Don Quixote turn the key in the door, she realized the urgency of the situation, put on her shawl, and ran to the house of the bachelor Samson Carrasco. She knew that her master had taken a fancy to this learned young man and thought he might be able to persuade him to give up the crazy idea. She fell on her knees before Samson and told him in excited language that her master had broken out again.
"Where is he breaking out?" asked the roguish bachelor.
"He is breaking out at the door of his madness," replied the bewildered housekeeper. "I mean he is going to break out again, for the third time, to hunt all over the world for what he calls adventures."
And then she went on to say that his first sally ended in his being brought back home, slung across the back of a donkey. The second time he made his entry into the village in an ox-cart, shut up in a cage, and looking so worn and emaciated that his own mother would not have known him. The last escapade had been an extremely expensive one, for it had taken no less than six hundred eggs to cover up his bones again.
The bachelor quieted the housekeeper, and promised her to do all he could for her master. Then he advised her to return home and prepare something hot for breakfast, and on her way home to repeat the prayer of Santa Appolonia. He himself would be there in time for breakfast, he said. The housekeeper remonstrated with the bachelor for prescribing the prayer of Santa Appolonia, which, she declared, was for toothache and not for brains; but Samson told her to do as he bade her, reminding her that he was a learned bachelor of Salamanca and knew what he was talking about. The housekeeper then left, saying her prayer, and the bachelor went to look for the curate that they might decide what to do.
In the meantime Don Quixote and Sancho were discussing what the future was holding for them, and Sancho gave the glad news to his master that he had induced his wife to sanction his departure and his becoming governor. Sancho was very much annoyed by his master's continual interruptions and corrections. Whenever Sancho would misuse or abuse a word, as he did in almost every sentence, Don Quixote would stop and ask him what he meant, until poor Sancho was so confused that he did not know what he had meant. Finally Don Quixote asked him to tell him all that his wife had said, and as soon as Sancho had a chance to use proverbs again, he felt more at home. "Teresa says," he repeated, "that I should make sure with your Worship, and let papers speak and beards be still. One take is better than two I'll give thee's."
"And so say I," said Don Quixote. "Continue, Sancho my friend. Go on; thou talkest pearls to-day."
"The fact is," continued Sancho, "that, as your Worship knows better than I do, we are all of us liable to death, and to-day we are, and to-morrow we are not. The lamb goes as soon as the sheep, and nobody can promise himself more hours of life in this world than God may be pleased to give him; for death is deaf, and when it comes to knock at our life's door, it is always insistent, and neither prayers, nor struggles, nor scepters, nor miters, can keep it back, as they tell us from the pulpits every day."
Here Don Quixote felt he ought to ask a question. "Sancho," said he, "all that is true; but what art thou driving at?"