Sancho came back to Don Quixote's house, and returning to the late subject of conversation, he said, "As to what Senor Samson said, that he would like to know by whom, or how, or when my ass was stolen, I say in reply that the same night we went into the Sierra Morena, flying from the Holy Brotherhood after that unlucky adventure of the galley slaves, and the other of the corpse that was going to Segovia, my master and I ensconced ourselves in a thicket, and there, my master leaning on his lance, and I seated on my Dapple, battered and weary with the late frays we fell asleep as if it had been on four feather mattresses; and I in particular slept so sound, that, whoever he was, he was able to come and prop me up on four stakes, which he put under the four corners of the pack-saddle in such a way that he left me mounted on it, and took away Dapple from under me without my feeling it."
"That is an easy matter," said Don Quixote, "and it is no new occurrence, for the same thing happened to Sacripante at the siege of Albracca; the famous thief, Brunello, by the same contrivance, took his horse from between his legs."
"Day came," continued Sancho, "and the moment I stirred the stakes gave way and I fell to the ground with a mighty come down; I looked about for the ass, but could not see him; the tears rushed to my eyes and I raised such a lamentation that, if the author of our history has not put it in, he may depend upon it he has left out a good thing. Some days after, I know not how many, travelling with her ladyship the Princess Micomicona, I saw my ass, and mounted upon him, in the dress of a gipsy, was that Gines de Pasamonte, the great rogue and rascal that my master and I freed from the chain."
"That is not where the mistake is," replied Samson; "it is, that before the ass has turned up, the author speaks of Sancho as being mounted on it."
"I don't know what to say to that," said Sancho, "unless that the historian made a mistake, or perhaps it might be a blunder of the printer's."
"No doubt that's it," said Samson; "but what became of the hundred crowns? Did they vanish?"
To which Sancho answered, "I spent them for my own good, and my wife's, and my children's, and it is they that have made my wife bear so patiently all my wanderings on highways and byways, in the service of my master, Don Quixote; for if after all this time I had come back to the house without a rap and without the ass, it would have been a poor look-out for me; and if anyone wants to know anything more about me, here I am, ready to answer the king himself in person; and it is no affair of anyone's whether I took or did not take, whether I spent or did not spend; for the whacks that were given me in these journeys were to be paid for in money, even if they were valued at no more than four maravedis apiece, another hundred crowns would not pay me for half of them. Let each look to himself and not try to make out white black, and black white; for each of us is as God made him, aye, and often worse."