such a lamentation that, if the author of our history has not put it in, he may depend upon it he has left out a good thing. Some days after, I know not how many, travelling with her ladyship the Princess Micomicona, I saw my ass, and mounted upon him, in the dress of a gypsy, was that Gines de Pasamonte, the great rogue and rascal that my master and I freed from the chain."
"That is not where the mistake is," replied Samson; "it is, that before the ass has turned up, the author speaks of Sancho as being mounted on it."
"I don't know what to say to that," said Sancho, "unless that the historian made a mistake, or perhaps it might be a blunder of the printer's."
"No doubt that's it," said Samson; "but what became of the hundred crowns?"
"They vanished," said Sancho; "I spent them for my own good, and my wife's, and my children's, and it is they have made my wife bear so patiently all my wanderings on highways and byways, in the service of my master, Don Quixote; for if after all this time I had come back to the house without a rap and without the ass, it would have been a poor look-out for me; and if any one wants to know anything more about me, here I am, ready to answer the king himself in person; and it is no affair of any one's, whether I took or did not take, whether I spent or did not spend; for if the whacks that were given me in these journeys were to be paid for in money, even if they were valued at no more than four maravedís apiece, another hundred crowns would not pay me for half of them. Let each look to himself and not try to make out white black, and black white; for each of us is as God made him, ay, and often worse." [1]
" I will take care," said Carrasco, " to impress upon the author of the history that, if he prints it again, he must not forget what worthy Sancho has said, for it will raise it a good span higher than it is."
"Is there anything else to correct in the history, señor bachelor? " asked Don Quixote.
"No doubt there is," replied he; " but not anything that will be of the same importance as those I have mentioned."
"Does the author promise a second part at all? " said Don Quixote.
- ↑ Prov. 80.
