of going to tamper with their princesses and trouble their ladies, were to come and cudgel your ribs, and not leave a whole bone in you? They would, indeed, have very good reason, they did not see that I am under orders, and that you are a messenger, my friend, no blame belongs to you.'[1] Don't you trust to that, Sancho, for the Manchegan folk are as hot-tempered as they are honest, and won't put up with liberties from anybody. By the Lord, if they get scent of you, it will be worse for you, I promise you. Be off, you scoundrel! Let the bolt fall.[2] Why should I go looking for three feet on a cat,[3] to please another man; and what is more, when looking for Dulcinea will be like looking for Marica in Rabena, or the bachelor in Salamanca ?[4] The devil, the devil and nobody else, has mixed me up in this business!"
Such was the soliloquy Sancho held with himself, and all the conclusion he could come to was to say to himself again, "Well, there's a remedy for everything except death,[5] under whose yoke we have all to pass, whether we like it or not, when life's finished. I have seen by a thousand signs that this master of mine is a madman fit to be tied, and for that matter, I too, am not behind him; for I'm a greater fool than he is when I follow him and serve him, if there's any truth in the proverb that says, 'Tell me what company thou keepest, and I'll tell thee what thou art,' or in that other, 'Not with whom thou art bred, but with whom thou art fed.'[6] Well then, if he be mad, as he is, and with a madness that mostly takes one thing for another, and white for black, and black for white, as was seen when he said the windmills were giants, and the monks' mules dromedaries, and the flocks of sheep armies of enemies, and much more to the same tune, it will not be very hard to make him believe that some country girl, the first I come across here, is the lady Dulcinea; and if he does not believe it, I'll swear it; and if he should swear, I'll swear again;
and if he persists, I'll persist still more, so as, come what may,
- ↑ Two lines from one of the Bernardo del Carpio ballads, "Con cartas y mensageros." (Cancionero de Romances, 1550.)
- ↑ Prov. 199; literally and in full the phrase runs, "Fall, thunderbolt, yonder on Tamayo's house" -- meaning, it is all the same to me, provided it does not fall on mine.
- ↑ Prov. 103.
- ↑ Prov. 134. As bachelors swarm in Salamanca, to go there looking for the bachelor, with no other address, would be the height of hopelessness.
- ↑ Prov. 144.
- ↑ Provs. 13, 153.
