"If you observe, and conduct yourself by these rules and precepts, Sancho, your days will be long upon the face of the earth; your fame will be eternal, your reward complete, and your felicity unutterable; your children will be married according to your wish; they and their descendants will enjoy titles; you shall live in peace and friendship with all mankind; when your course of life is run, death will overtake you in a happy and mature old age, and your eyes will be shut by the tender and delicate hands of your posterity, in the third or fourth generation.
"The remarks I have hitherto made are documents touching the decoration of your soul; and now you will listen to the directions I have to give concerning thy person and deportment."
of the second series of instructions don quixote gave to sancho panza.
Who that has duly considered Don Quixote's instructions to his squire would not have taken him for a person of singular intelligence and discretion? But, in truth, as it has often been said in the progress of this great history, he raved only on the subject of chivalry; on all others he manifested a sound and discriminating understanding; wherefore his judgment and his actions appeared continually at variance. But, in these second instructions given to Sancho, which showed much ingenuity, his wisdom and frenzy are both singularly conspicuous.
During the whole of this private conference, Sancho listened to his master with great attention, and endeavored so to register his counsel in his mind that he might thereby be enabled to bear the burden of government and acquit himself honorably. Don Quixote now proceeded:—
"As to the regulation of thine own person and domestic concerns," said he, "in the first place, Sancho, I enjoin thee to be cleanly in all things. Keep the nails of thy fingers constantly and neatly pared, nor suffer them to grow as some do, who ignorantly imagine that long nails beautify the hand, and account the excess of that excrement simply a finger-nail, whereas it is rather the talon of the lizard-hunting kestrel,—a foul and unsightly object. A slovenly dress betokens a careless mind; or, as in the case of Julius Cæsar, it may be attributed to cunning.
"Examine prudently the income of thy office, and if it will afford thee to give liveries to thy servants, give them such as are decent and lasting, rather than gaudy and modish; and what thou shalt thus save in thy servants bestow on the poor; so shalt thou have attendants both in heaven and earth—a provision which our vain-glorious great never think of.
"Eat neither garlic nor onions, lest the smell betray thy rusticity. Walk with gravity, and speak deliberately, but not so as to seem to be listening to thyself; for affectation is odious.
"Eat little at dinner and less at supper; for the health of the whole body is tempered in the laboratory of the stomach.