"'So focile' means I am so much that way," replied Sancho.

"I understand thee still less now," said Don Quixote.

"Well, if you can't understand me," said Sancho, "I don't know how to put it; I know no more, God help me."

"Oh, now I have hit it," said Don Quixote; "thou wouldst say thou art so docile, tractable, and gentle that thou wilt take what I say to thee, and submit to what I teach thee."

"I would bet," said Sancho, "that from the very first you understood me, and knew what I meant, but you wanted to put me out that you might hear me make another couple of dozen blunders."

"May be so," replied Don Quixote; "but to come to the point, what does Teresa say?"

"Teresa says," replied Sancho, "that I should make sure with your worship, and 'let papers speak and beards be still,' for 'he who binds does not wrangle,' since one 'take' is better than two 'I'll give thee's;' and I say a woman's advice is no great thing, and he who won't take it is a fool."

"And so say I," said Don Quixote; "continue, Sancho my friend; go on; you talk pearls to-day."

"The fact is," continued Sancho, "that, as your worship knows better than I do, we are all of us liable to death, and to-day we are, and to-morrow we are not, and the lamb goes as soon as the sheep, and nobody can promise himself more hours of life in this world than God may be pleased to give him; for death is deaf, and when it comes to knock at our life's door, it is always urgent, and neither prayers, nor struggles, nor sceptres, nor mitres, can keep it back, as common talk and report say, and as they tell us from the pulpits every day."

"All that is very true," said Don Quixote; "but I cannot make out what thou art driving at."