“A nice sort of historian, indeed!” exclaimed Sancho at this; “he must know a deal about our affairs when he calls my wife Teresa Panza, Mari Gutierrez; take the book again, señor, and see if I am in it and if he has changed my name.”
“From your talk, friend,” said Don Jeronimo, “no doubt you are Sancho Panza, Señor Don Quixote’s squire.”
“Yes, I am,” said Sancho; “and I’m proud of it.”
“Faith, then,” said the gentleman, “this new author does not handle you with the decency that displays itself in your person; he makes you out a heavy feeder and a fool, and not in the least droll, and a very different being from the Sancho described in the First Part of your master’s history.”
“God forgive him,” said Sancho; “he might have left me in my corner without troubling his head about me; ‘let him who knows how ring the bells; ‘Saint Peter is very well in Rome.’”
The two gentlemen pressed Don Quixote to come into their room and have supper with them, as they knew very well there was nothing in that inn fit for one of his sort. Don Quixote, who was always polite, yielded to their request and supped with them. Sancho stayed behind with the stew. and invested with plenary delegated authority seated himself at the head of the table, and the landlord sat down with him, for he was no less fond of cow-heel and calves’ feet than Sancho was.
While at supper Don Juan asked Don Quixote what news he had of the lady Dulcinea del Toboso, was she married, had she been brought to bed, or was she with child, or did she in maidenhood, still preserving her modesty and delicacy, cherish the remembrance of the tender passion of Señor Don Quixote?
To this he replied, “Dulcinea is a maiden still, and my passion more firmly rooted than ever, our intercourse unsatisfactory as before, and her beauty transformed into that of a foul country wench;” and then he proceeded to give them a full and particular account of the enchantment of Dulcinea, and of what had happened him in the cave of Montesinos, together with what the sage Merlin had prescribed for her disenchantment, namely the scourging of Sancho.
Exceedingly great was the amusement the two gentlemen derived from hearing Don Quixote recount the strange incidents of his history; and if they were amazed by his absurdities they were equally amazed by the elegant style in which he delivered them. On the one hand they regarded him as a man of wit and sense, and on the other he seemed to them a maundering blockhead, and they could not make up their minds whereabouts between wisdom and folly they ought to place him.
Sancho having finished his supper, and left the landlord in the X condition, repaired to the room where his master was, and as he came in said, “May I die, sirs, if the author of this book your worships have got has any mind that we should agree; as he calls me glutton (according to what your worships say) I wish he may not call me drunkard too.”