Chapter IV. In which Sancho Panza answers the bachelor Sansón Carrasco’s doubts and questions, with other events worth knowing and telling

Sancho came back to Don Quixote’s house, and, going back to the earlier conversation, he said:

“As to what Señor Sansón said, that people wanted to know who, or how, or when my donkey was stolen, I say in answer that on the very night when, fleeing from the Holy Brotherhood, we went into the Sierra Morena, after the misadventure of the galley slaves and the one of the dead man they were taking to Segovia, my master and I got in among some thickets, where my master leaning on his lance, and I sitting on my gray, bruised and tired out from the skirmishes we’d had, settled down to sleep as if it were on four feather mattresses; I especially slept so heavily that whoever it was had the chance to come and prop me up on four stakes that he set at the four sides of the packsaddle, so that he left me sitting astride it, and he took the gray out from under me without my feeling it.”

“That is an easy thing, and nothing new, for the same thing happened to Sacripante when, at the siege of Albraca, that famous thief called Brunelo, with this very trick, took his horse from between his legs.”

“Day came,” Sancho went on, “and as soon as I stirred, the stakes gave way and down I came to the ground with a great fall; I looked for the donkey, and I didn’t see him; tears came to my eyes, and I made a lament, and if the author of our history didn’t put it in, he can reckon he didn’t put in anything good. At the end of I don’t know how many days, as we were going along with the lady Princess Micomicona, I recognized my ass, and riding on him, dressed as a gypsy, was that Ginés de Pasamonte, that swindler and great evildoer whom my master and I freed from the chain.”

“That is not where the mistake lies,” replied Sansón, “but in the fact that, before the donkey turned up, the author says Sancho was riding on that same gray.”

“To that,” said Sancho, “I don’t know what to answer, except that the historian got it wrong, or else it must have been the printer’s carelessness.”

“That is it, no doubt,” said Sansón, “but what became of the hundred escudos? Did they vanish?”

Sancho answered:

“I spent them on the good of my own preson and my wife’s, and my children’s, and they’ve been the reason my wife puts up patiently with the roads and journeys I’ve traveled serving my master Don Quixote; for if, after all that time, I’d come back to my house without a blanca and without the donkey, a black fate would have been waiting for me; and if there’s anything more to know about me, here I am, and I’ll answer the king himself in preson, and nobody has any call to meddle in whether I brought or didn’t bring, whether I spent or didn’t spend; for if the beatings they gave me on these travels had to be paid for in money, even if they were assessed at no more than four maravedís apiece, another hundred escudos wouldn’t be enough to pay me half; and let everyone put his hand on his own breast, and not go judging white for black and black for white; for every man is as God made him, and often worse.”

“I shall take care,” said Carrasco, “to charge the author of the history that if he prints it again he must not forget what the good Sancho has said, for that will raise it a good notch above where it stands.”

“Is there anything else to correct in that legend, Señor Bachelor?” asked Don Quixote.

“There must be,” he answered, “but none of them can be as important as the ones already mentioned.”

“And does the author by any chance,” said Don Quixote, “promise a second part?”

“He does promise one,” answered Sansón, “but he says he has not found it and does not know who has it, and so we are in doubt whether it will come out or not; and for this reason, as well as because some say, ‘Second parts were never good,’ and others, ‘Of Don Quixote’s doings, those written are enough,’ it is doubted there will be a second part; although some who are more jovial than saturnine say: ‘Let’s have more quixoteries: let Don Quixote charge and Sancho Panza talk, and come what may, that will content us.’”

“And what does the author mean to do?”

“This,” answered Sansón: “as soon as he finds the history, which he is searching for with extraordinary diligence, he will send it straight to the press, moved more by the profit that will come to him from publishing it than by any praise.”

To which Sancho said:

“The author has his eye on money and profit? It’ll be a wonder if he gets it right, because he’ll do nothing but botch and botch, like a tailor on the eve of a feast, and works that are done in a hurry are never finished with the perfection they need. Let this Moorish gentleman, or whatever he is, mind what he’s doing; for my master and I will hand him so much rubble to build with, in the way of adventures and all sorts of happenings, that he can compose not just a second part but a hundred. The good man must surely think we’re lying asleep here in the straw; well, let him hold our foot for the shoeing, and he’ll see which one we limp on. What I can tell you is that if my master took my advice, we’d already be out in the fields undoing injuries and righting wrongs, as good knights-errant are used and accustomed to do.”

Sancho had scarcely finished saying these words when the neighing of Rocinante reached their ears; and Don Quixote took this neighing for a most happy omen and resolved to make another sally within three or four days; and, telling the bachelor of his intention, he asked his advice as to which direction he should begin his journey in; and the bachelor answered that in his opinion he should go to the kingdom of Aragon and to the city of Zaragoza, where, in a few days’ time, some most solemn jousts were to be held for the feast of Saint George, in which he might win fame over every knight of Aragon, and that would be winning it over every knight in the world. He praised his resolution as most honorable and most valiant, and warned him to be more cautious in facing dangers, because his life was not his own, but belonged to all those who would need him to protect and succor them in their misfortunes.

“That’s just what I curse, Señor Sansón,” said Sancho at this point, “for my master will charge a hundred armed men as readily as a greedy boy goes at half a dozen melons. Body of the world, Señor Bachelor! Yes, there’s a time to attack and a time to retreat; yes, it can’t all be ‘Saint James, and close in, Spain!’ And besides, I’ve heard said, and I think by my master himself, if I remember right, that between the extremes of coward and rash lies the middle of valor; and if that’s so, I don’t want him to run away without a reason, or to attack when too much odds call for something else. But above all, I give my master warning that if he’s to take me with him, it has to be on condition that he does all the fighting himself, and that I’m not bound to anything but looking after his person in what touches his cleanliness and his comfort; for in that I’ll dance attendance on him; but to think I’m to put my hand to my sword, even against boorish miscreants with ax and iron cap, is thinking of what will never be. I, Señor Sansón, don’t mean to win fame as a brave man, but as the best and most loyal squire that ever served a knight-errant; and if my master Don Quixote, obliged by my many good services, should want to give me some isle, of the many his grace says we’re bound to run into hereabouts, I’ll take it as a great favor; and if he doesn’t give me one, I was born, all the same, and a man mustn’t live trusting in anyone but God; and what’s more, bread will taste as good to me ungoverned, and maybe better, as it would being a governor; and do I know, by any chance, whether in those governments the devil hasn’t got some trip ready for me, where I stumble and fall and knock out my molars? Sancho I was born, and Sancho I mean to die; but if, for all that, fair and square, without much seeking and without much risk, heaven should send me some isle, or some other such thing, I’m not such a fool as to turn it down; for they also say: ‘When they give you the heifer, run with the halter’; and ‘When good comes, take it into your house.’”

“You, brother Sancho,” said Carrasco, “have spoken like a professor; but, for all that, trust in God and in Señor Don Quixote, for he will give you a kingdom, let alone an isle.”

“More or less, it’s all one,” answered Sancho, “although I can tell Señor Carrasco that my master wouldn’t be throwing any kingdom he gave me into a torn sack, for I’ve taken my own pulse, and I find myself healthy enough to rule kingdoms and govern isles, and I’ve told my master so before now.”

“Look, Sancho,” said Sansón, “office changes manners, and it may be that when you see yourself a governor you won’t know the mother who bore you.”

“That,” answered Sancho, “is to be understood of those who were born among the mallows, and not of those who have four fingers of Old Christian fat on their souls, as I have. No, just come and try my nature, and see whether it knows how to be ungrateful to anyone!”

“God grant it,” said Don Quixote, “and we shall see when the government comes; for it seems to me I already have it before my eyes.”

This said, he begged the bachelor, if he was a poet, to do him the favor of composing some verses for him on the farewell he meant to take of his lady Dulcinea del Toboso, and to see that each line began with a letter of her name, so that when the verses were done, putting the first letters together, one might read: Dulcinea del Toboso.

The bachelor answered that, although he was not one of the famous poets there were in Spain, who were said to be only three and a half, he would not fail to compose such verses, although he found a great difficulty in their composition, because the letters that made up the name were seventeen; and if he wrote four Castilian stanzas of four lines each, there would be one letter too many; and if of five, which they call décimas or redondillas, there would be three letters too few; but for all that he would try to squeeze in one letter as best he could, so that the name of Dulcinea del Toboso would be included in the four Castilian stanzas.

“It must be so, by all means,” said Don Quixote, “for if the name is not there plain and manifest, there is no woman who will believe the verses were made for her.”

They agreed on this, and that the departure would be eight days later. Don Quixote charged the bachelor to keep it secret, especially from the priest and Master Nicolás, and from his niece and the housekeeper, so that they would not hinder his honorable and valiant resolution. Carrasco promised everything. With this he took his leave, charging Don Quixote to let him know of all his good or bad fortunes, whenever he had the chance; and so they parted, and Sancho went to put in order what was needed for their journey.