“For all that,” said the housekeeper, “you don’t enter here, you bag of mischief and sack of knavery; go govern your house and dig your seed-patch, and give over looking for islands or shylands.”
The curate and the barber listened with great amusement to the words of the three; but Don Quixote, uneasy lest Sancho should blab and blurt out a whole heap of mischievous stupidities, and touch upon points that might not be altogether to his credit, called to him and made the other two hold their tongues and let him come in. Sancho entered, and the curate and the barber took their leave of Don Quixote, of whose recovery they despaired when they saw how wedded he was to his crazy ideas, and how saturated with the nonsense of his unlucky chivalry; and said the curate to the barber, “You will see, gossip, that when we are least thinking of it, our gentleman will be off once more for another flight.”
“I have no doubt of it,” returned the barber; “but I do not wonder so much at the madness of the knight as at the simplicity of the squire, who has such a firm belief in all that about the island, that I suppose all the exposures that could be imagined would not get it out of his head.”
“God help them,” said the curate; “and let us be on the look-out to see what comes of all these absurdities of the knight and squire, for it seems as if they had both been cast in the same mould, and the madness of the master without the simplicity of the man would not be worth a farthing.”
“That is true,” said the barber, “and I should like very much to know what the pair are talking about at this moment.”
“I promise you,” said the curate, “the niece or the housekeeper will tell us by-and-by, for they are not the ones to forget to listen.”
Meanwhile Don Quixote shut himself up in his room with Sancho, and when they were alone he said to him, “It grieves me greatly, Sancho, that thou shouldst have said, and sayest, that I took thee out of thy cottage, when thou knowest I did not remain in my house. We sallied forth together, we took the road together, we wandered abroad together; we have had the same fortune and the same luck; if they blanketed thee once, they belaboured me a hundred times, and that is the only advantage I have of thee.”
“That was only reasonable,” replied Sancho, “for, by what your worship says, misfortunes belong more properly to knights-errant than to their squires.”
“Thou art mistaken, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “according to the maxim quando caput dolet, etc.”
“I don’t understand any language but my own,” said Sancho.