Don Quixote now felt it right to quit a life of such idleness as he was leading in the castle; for he fancied that he was making himself sorely missed by suffering himself to remain shut up and inactive amid the countless luxuries and enjoyments his hosts lavished upon him as a knight, and he felt too that he would have to render a strict account to heaven of that indolence and seclusion; and so one day he asked the duke and duchess to grant him permission to take his departure.
They gave it, showing at the same time that they were very sorry he was leaving them.
The duchess gave his wife’s letters to Sancho Panza, who shed tears over them, saying, 'Who would have thought that such grand hopes as the news of my government bred in my wife Teresa Panza’s breast would end in my going back now to the vagabond adventures of my master Don Quixote of La Mancha?
Still I’m glad to see my Teresa behaved as she ought in sending the acorns, for if she had not sent them I’d have been sorry, and she’d have shown herself ungrateful.
It is a comfort to me that they can’t call that present a bribe; for I had got the government already when she sent them, and it’s but reasonable that those who have had a good turn done them should show their gratitude, if it’s only with a trifle.
After all I went into the government naked, and I come out of it naked; so I can say with a safe conscience—and that’s no small matter—‘naked I was born, naked I find myself, I neither lose nor gain.
’' Thus did Sancho soliloquise on the day of their departure, as Don Quixote, who had the night