been put in peaceful possession of your realm it shall
be left to your own decision to dispose of your person as may be most
pleasing to you; for so long as my memory is occupied, my will enslaved,
and my understanding enthralled by her-I say no more--it is impossible
for me for a moment to contemplate marriage, even with a Phoenix."

The last words of his master about not wanting to marry were so
disagreeable to Sancho that raising his voice he exclaimed with great
irritation:

"By my oath, Senor Don Quixote, you are not in your right senses; for how
can your worship possibly object to marrying such an exalted princess as
this? Do you think Fortune will offer you behind every stone such a piece
of luck as is offered you now? Is my lady Dulcinea fairer, perchance? Not
she; nor half as fair; and I will even go so far as to say she does not
come up to the shoe of this one here. A poor chance I have of getting
that county I am waiting for if your worship goes looking for dainties in
the bottom of the sea. In the devil's name, marry, marry, and take this
kingdom that comes to hand without any trouble, and when you are king
make me a marquis or governor of a province, and for the rest let the
devil take it all."

Don Quixote, when he heard such blasphemies uttered against his lady
Dulcinea, could not endure it, and lifting his pike, without saying
anything to Sancho or uttering a word, he gave him two such thwacks that
he brought him to the ground; and had it not been that Dorothea cried out
to him to spare him he would have no doubt taken his life on the spot.

"Do you think," he said to him after a pause, "you scurvy clown, that you
are to be always interfering with me, and that you are to be always
offending and I always pardoning? Don't fancy it, impious scoundrel, for
that beyond a doubt thou art, since thou hast set thy tongue going
against the peerless Dulcinea. Know you not, lout, vagabond, beggar, that
were it not for the might that she infuses into my arm I should not have
strength enough to kill a flea? Say, scoffer with a viper's tongue, what
think you has won this kingdom and cut off this giant's head and made you
a marquis (for all this I count as already accomplished and decided), but
the might of Dulcinea, employing my arm as the instrument of her
achievements? She fights in me and conquers in me, and I live and breathe
in her, and owe my life and being to her. O whoreson scoundrel, how
ungrateful you are,