, or at least a monarch; for it had been
so settled between them, and with his personal worth and the might of his
arm it was an easy matter to come to be one: and how on becoming one his
lord was to make a marriage for him (for he would be a widower by that
time, as a matter of course) and was to give him as a wife one of the
damsels of the empress, the heiress of some rich and grand state on the
mainland, having nothing to do with islands of any sort, for he did not
care for them now. All this Sancho delivered with so much
composure--wiping his nose from time to time--and with so little
common-sense that his two hearers were again filled with wonder at the
force of Don Quixote's madness that could run away with this poor man's
reason. They did not care to take the trouble of disabusing him of his
error, as they considered that since it did not in any way hurt his
conscience it would be better to leave him in it, and they would have all
the more amusement in listening to his simplicities; and so they bade him
pray to God for his lord's health, as it was a very likely and a very
feasible thing for him in course of time to come to be an emperor, as he
said, or at least an archbishop or some other dignitary of equal rank.

To which Sancho made answer, "If fortune, sirs, should bring things about
in such a way that my master should have a mind, instead of being an
emperor, to be an archbishop, I should like to know what
archbishops-errant commonly give their squires?"

"They commonly give them," said the curate, some simple benefice or cure,
or some place as sacristan which brings them a good fixed income, not
counting the altar fees, which may be reckoned at as much more."

"But for that," said Sancho, "the squire must be unmarried, and must
know, at any rate, how to help at mass, and if that be so, woe is me, for
I am married already and I don't know the first letter of the A B C. What
will become of me if my master takes a fancy to be an archbishop and not
an emperor, as is usual and customary with knights-errant?"

"Be not uneasy, friend Sancho," said the barber, "for we will entreat
your master, and advise him, even urging it upon him as a case of
conscience, to become an emperor and not an archbishop, because it will
be easier for him as he is more valiant than lettered."

"So I have thought," said Sancho; "though I can tell you he is fit for
anything: what I mean to do for my part is to pray to our Lord to place