that provided I have enough to eat, I can eat it as well, or better, standing, and by myself, than seated alongside of an emperor. And indeed, if the truth is to be told, what I eat in my corner without form or fuss has much more relish for me, even though it be bread and onions, than the turkeys of those other tables where I am forced to chew slowly, drink little, wipe my mouth every minute, and can not sneeze or cough if I want, or do other things that are the privileges of liberty and solitude. So, señor, as for these honors which your worship would put upon me as a servant and follower of knight-errantry (which I am, being your worship's squire), exchange them for other things which may be of more use and advantage to me; for these, though I fully acknowledge them as received, I renounce from this moment to the end of the world."
"For all that," said Don Quixote, "thou must seat thyself, because him who humbleth himself God exalteth;" and seizing him by the arm he forced him to sit down beside himself.
The goatherds did not understand this jargon about squires and knights-errant, and all they did was to eat in silence and stare at their guests, who, with great elegance and appetite, were stowing away pieces as big as one's list. The course of meat finished, they spread upon the sheepskins a great heap of parched acorns, and with them they put down a half cheese harder than if it had been made of mortar. All this while the horn was not idle, for it went round so constantly, now full, now empty, like the bucket of a water-wheel, [1] that it soon drained one of the two wine-skins that were in sight. When Don Quixote had quite appeased his appetite, he took up a handful of the acorns, and contemplating them attentively delivered himself somewhat in this fashion: [2]
"Happy the age, happy the time, to which the ancients gave the name of golden, not because in that fortunate age the gold so coveted in this our iron one was gained without toil, but because they that lived in it knew not the two words 'mine' and 'thine'! In that blessed age all things were in common; to win the daily food, no labor was required of any save to
- ↑ "Water-wheel"—noria—a machine used for irrigation in Spain, by which the water is raised in pots or buckets attached to the circumference of a large wheel.
- ↑ The eulogy of the golden age is one of the loci classici of Don Quixote quoted in every Spanish anthology; the reader, however, must not judge of it by translation, which can not give the stately roll and flow of the original Castilian.
