While Don Quixote and Sancho were shut up together, they had a discussion which the history records with great precision and scrupulous exactness. Sancho said to his master, “Señor, I have educed my wife to let me go with your worship wherever you choose to take me.”
“Induced, you should say, Sancho,” said Don Quixote; “not educed.”
“Once or twice, as well as I remember,” replied Sancho, “I have begged of your worship not to mend my words, if so be as you understand what I mean by them; and if you don’t understand them to say ‘Sancho,’ or ‘devil,’ ‘I don’t understand thee; and if I don’t make my meaning plain, then you may correct me, for I am so focile—”
“I don’t understand thee, Sancho,” said Don Quixote at once; “for I know not what ‘I am so focile’ means.”
“‘So focile’ means I am so much that way,” replied Sancho.
“I understand thee still less now,” said Don Quixote.
“Well, if you can’t understand me,” said Sancho, “I don’t know how to put it; I know no more, God help me.”
“Oh, now I have hit it,” said Don Quixote; “thou wouldst say thou art so docile, tractable, and gentle that thou wilt take what I say to thee, and submit to what I teach thee.”
“I would bet,” said Sancho, “that from the very first you understood me, and knew what I meant, but you wanted to put me out that you might hear me make another couple of dozen blunders.”
“May be so,” replied Don Quixote; “but to come to the point, what does Teresa say?”