“By God,” said Sancho, “but your worship must be out of your senses! This is like the common saying, ‘You see me with child, and you want me a virgin.’ Just as I’m about to go sitting on a bare board, your worship would have me score my backside! Indeed, your worship is not reasonable. Let us be off to shave these duennas; and on our return I promise on my word to make such haste to wipe off all that’s due as will satisfy your worship; I can’t say more.”
“Well, I will comfort myself with that promise, my good Sancho,” replied Don Quixote, “and I believe thou wilt keep it; for indeed though stupid thou art veracious.”
“I’m not voracious,” said Sancho, “only peckish; but even if I was a little, still I’d keep my word.”
With this they went back to mount Clavileño, and as they were about to do so Don Quixote said, “Cover thine eyes, Sancho, and mount; for one who sends for us from lands so far distant cannot mean to deceive us for the sake of the paltry glory to be derived from deceiving persons who trust in him; though all should turn out the contrary of what I hope, no malice will be able to dim the glory of having undertaken this exploit.”
“Let us be off, señor,” said Sancho, “for I have taken the beards and tears of these ladies deeply to heart, and I shan’t eat a bit to relish it until I have seen them restored to their former smoothness. Mount, your worship, and blindfold yourself, for if I am to go on the croup, it is plain the rider in the saddle must mount first.”
“That is true,” said Don Quixote, and, taking a handkerchief out of his pocket, he begged the Distressed One to bandage his eyes very carefully; but after having them bandaged he uncovered them again, saying, “If my memory does not deceive me, I have read in Virgil of the Palladium of Troy, a wooden horse the Greeks offered to the goddess Pallas, which was big with armed knights, who were afterwards the destruction of Troy; so it would be as well to see, first of all, what Clavileño has in his stomach.”
“There is no occasion,” said the Distressed One; “I will be bail for him, and I know that Malambruno has nothing tricky or treacherous about him; you may mount without any fear, Señor Don Quixote; on my head be it if any harm befalls you.”
Don Quixote thought that to say anything further with regard to his safety would be putting his courage in an unfavourable light; and so, without more words, he mounted Clavileño, and tried the peg, which turned easily; and as he had no stirrups and his legs hung down, he looked like nothing so much as a figure in some Roman triumph painted or embroidered on a Flemish tapestry.
Much against the grain, and very slowly, Sancho proceeded to mount, and, after settling himself as well as he could on the croup, found it rather hard, and not at all soft, and asked the duke if it would be possible to oblige him with a pad of some kind, or a cushion; even if it were off the couch of his lady the duchess, or the bed of one of the pages; as the haunches of that horse were more like marble than wood. On this the Trifaldi observed that Clavileño would not bear any kind of harness or trappings, and that his best plan would be to sit sideways like a woman, as in that way he would not feel the hardness so much.
Sancho did so, and, bidding them farewell, allowed his eyes to be bandaged, but immediately afterwards uncovered them again, and looking tenderly and tearfully on those in the garden, bade them help him in his present strait with plenty of Paternosters and Ave Marias, that God might provide someone to say as many for them, whenever they found themselves in a similar emergency.