to-morrow they are coming to bury him with great ceremony where I said. I am sure it will be something worth seeing: at least I will not fail to go and see it even if I knew I should not return to the village to-morrow."
"We will do the same," answered the goatherds, "and cast lots to see who must stay to mind the goats of all."
"Thou sayest well, Pedro," said one, "though there will be no need of taking that trouble, for I will stay behind for all; and don't suppose it is virtue or want of curiosity in me; it is that the splinter that ran into my foot the other day will not let me walk."
"For all that, we thank thee," answered Pedro.
Don Quixote asked Pedro to tell him who the dead man was and who the shepherdess, to which Pedro replied that all he knew was that the dead man was a wealthy gentleman belonging to a village in those mountains, who had been a student at Salamanca for many years, at the end of which he returned to his village with the reputation of being very learned and deeply read. Above all, they said, he was learned in the science of the stars and of what went on yonder in the heavens and the sun and the moon, for he told us of the cris of the sun and moon to the exact time.
"Eclipse it is called, friend, not cris, the darkening of those two luminaries," said Don Quixote; but Pedro, not troubling himself with trifles, went on with his story, saying, "Also he foretold when the year was going to be one of abundance or estility."
"Sterility, you mean, friend," said Don Quixote.
"Sterility or estility," answered Pedro, "it is all the same in the end. And I can tell you that by this his father and friends who believed him grew very rich because they did as he advised them, bidding them 'sow barley this year, not wheat; this year you may sow pulse [1] and not barley; the next there will be a full oil crop, and the three following not a drop will be got.'"
"That science is called astrology," said Don Quixote.
"I do not know what it is called," replied Pedro, "but I know that he knew all this and more besides. But, to make an end, not many months had passed after he returned from Salamanca, when one day he appeared dressed as a shepherd
- ↑ "Pulse"—garbanzos, or chick-peas, one of the invariable constituent's of the olla or puchero, and therefore an important crop in Spain.
