ng a considerable distance out of
the road. They threw down their staves, took off their pilgrim's cloaks
and remained in their under-clothing; they were all good-looking young
fellows, except Ricote, who was a man somewhat advanced in years. They
carried alforjas all of them, and all apparently well filled, at least
with things provocative of thirst, such as would summon it from two
leagues off. They stretched themselves on the ground, and making a
tablecloth of the grass they spread upon it bread, salt, knives, walnut,
scraps of cheese, and well-picked ham-bones which if they were past
gnawing were not past sucking. They also put down a black dainty called,
they say, caviar, and made of the eggs of fish, a great thirst-wakener.
Nor was there any lack of olives, dry, it is true, and without any
seasoning, but for all that toothsome and pleasant. But what made the
best show in the field of the banquet was half a dozen botas of wine, for
each of them produced his own from his alforjas; even the good Ricote,
who from a Morisco had transformed himself into a German or Dutchman,
took out his, which in size might have vied with the five others. They
then began to eat with very great relish and very leisurely, making the
most of each morsel--very small ones of everything--they took up on the
point of the knife; and then all at the same moment raised their arms and
botas aloft, the mouths placed in their mouths, and all eyes fixed on
heaven just as if they were taking aim at it; and in this attitude they
remained ever so long, wagging their heads from side to side as if in
acknowledgment of the pleasure they were enjoying while they decanted the
bowels of the bottles into their own stomachs.

Sancho beheld all, "and nothing gave him pain;" so far from that, acting
on the proverb he knew so well, "when thou art at Rome do as thou seest,"
he asked Ricote for his bota and took aim like the rest of them, and with
not less enjoyment. Four times did the botas bear being uplifted, but the
fifth it was all in vain, for they were drier and more sapless than a
rush by that time, which made the jollity that had been kept up so far
begin to flag.

Every now and then some one of them would grasp Sancho's right hand in
his own saying, "Espanoli y Tudesqui tuto uno: bon compano;" and Sancho
would answer, "Bon compano, jur a Di!" and then go off into a fit of
laughter that lasted an hour, without a thought for the moment of
anything that had