Don Quixote’s bread would not bake, as the common saying is, until he had heard and learned the curious things promised by the man who carried the arms.
He went to seek him where the innkeeper said he was and having found him, bade him say now at any rate what he had to say in answer to the question he had asked him on the road.
'The tale of my wonders must be taken more leisurely and not standing,' said the man; 'let me finish foddering my beast, good sir; and then I’ll tell you things that will astonish you.
' 'Don’t wait for that,' said Don Quixote; 'I’ll help you in everything,' and so he did, sifting the barley for him and cleaning out the manger; a degree of humility which made the other feel bound to tell him with a good grace what he had asked; so seating himself on a bench, with Don Quixote beside him, and the cousin, the page, Sancho Panza, and the landlord, for a senate and an audience, he began his story in this way: 'You must know that in a village four leagues and a half from this inn, it so happened that one of the regidors, by the tricks and roguery of a servant girl of his (it’s too long a tale to tell), lost an ass; and though he did all he possibly could to find it, it was all to no purpose.
A fortnight might have gone by, so the story goes, since the ass had been missing, when, as the regidor who had lost it was standing in the plaza, another regidor of the same town said to him, ‘Pay me for good news, gossip; your ass has turned up.
’ ‘That I will, and well, gossip,’ said the