Back

Don Quixote

Chapter 65

The translator of this history, when he comes to write this fifth chapter, says that he considers it apocryphal, because in it Sancho Panza speaks in a style unlike that which might have been expected from his limited intelligence, and says things so subtle that he does not think it possible he could have conceived them; however, desirous of doing what his task imposed upon him, he was unwilling to leave it untranslated, and therefore he went on to say: Sancho came home in such glee and spirits that his wife noticed his happiness a bowshot off, so much so that it made her ask him, 'What have you got, Sancho friend, that you are so glad?

' To which he replied, 'Wife, if it were God’s will, I should be very glad not to be so well pleased as I show myself.

' 'I don’t understand you, husband,' said she, 'and I don’t know what you mean by saying you would be glad, if it were God’s will, not to be well pleased; for, fool as I am, I don’t know how one can find pleasure in not having it.

' 'Hark ye, Teresa,' replied Sancho, 'I am glad because I have made up my mind to go back to the service of my master Don Quixote, who means to go out a third time to seek for adventures; and I am going with him again, for my necessities will have it so, and also the hope that cheers me with the thought that I may find another hundred crowns like those we have spent; though it makes me sad to have to leave thee and the children; and if God would be pleased to let me have my daily bread, dry-shod and at home, without taking me out into the byways

Previous
Next