“In truth and earnest, señor guest,” said the landlord, “all I have is a couple of cow-heels like calves’ feet, or a couple of calves’ feet like cowheels; they are boiled with chick-peas, onions, and bacon, and at this moment they are crying ‘Come eat me, come eat me.”
“I mark them for mine on the spot,” said Sancho; “let nobody touch them; I’ll pay better for them than anyone else, for I could not wish for anything more to my taste; and I don’t care a pin whether they are feet or heels.”
“Nobody shall touch them,” said the landlord; “for the other guests I have, being persons of high quality, bring their own cook and caterer and larder with them.”
“If you come to people of quality,” said Sancho, “there’s nobody more so than my master; but the calling he follows does not allow of larders or store-rooms; we lay ourselves down in the middle of a meadow, and fill ourselves with acorns or medlars.”
Here ended Sancho’s conversation with the landlord, Sancho not caring to carry it any farther by answering him; for he had already asked him what calling or what profession it was his master was of.
Supper-time having come, then, Don Quixote betook himself to his room, the landlord brought in the stew-pan just as it was, and he sat himself down to sup very resolutely. It seems that in another room, which was next to Don Quixote’s, with nothing but a thin partition to separate it, he overheard these words, “As you live, Señor Don Jeronimo, while they are bringing supper, let us read another chapter of the Second Part of ‘Don Quixote of La Mancha.’”
The instant Don Quixote heard his own name he started to his feet and listened with open ears to catch what they said about him, and heard the Don Jeronimo who had been addressed say in reply, “Why would you have us read that absurd stuff, Don Juan, when it is impossible for anyone who has read the First Part of the history of ‘Don Quixote of La Mancha’ to take any pleasure in reading this Second Part?”
“For all that,” said he who was addressed as Don Juan, “we shall do well to read it, for there is no book so bad but it has something good in it. What displeases me most in it is that it represents Don Quixote as now cured of his love for Dulcinea del Toboso.”
On hearing this Don Quixote, full of wrath and indignation, lifted up his voice and said, “Whoever he may be who says that Don Quixote of La Mancha has forgotten or can forget Dulcinea del Toboso, I will teach him with equal arms that what he says is very far from the truth; for neither can the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso be forgotten, nor can forgetfulness have a place in Don Quixote; his motto is constancy, and his profession to maintain the same with his life and never wrong it.”
“Who is this that answers us?” said they in the next room.