treating us to, and all that is still to come."

"All that might be, Sancho," replied Don Quixote; "but it is not so, for
everything that I have told you I saw with my own eyes, and touched with
my own hands. But what will you say when I tell you now how, among the
countless other marvellous things Montesinos showed me (of which at
leisure and at the proper time I will give thee an account in the course
of our journey, for they would not be all in place here), he showed me
three country girls who went skipping and capering like goats over the
pleasant fields there, and the instant I beheld them I knew one to be the
peerless Dulcinea del Toboso, and the other two those same country girls
that were with her and that we spoke to on the road from El Toboso! I
asked Montesinos if he knew them, and he told me he did not, but he
thought they must be some enchanted ladies of distinction, for it was
only a few days before that they had made their appearance in those
meadows; but I was not to be surprised at that, because there were a
great many other ladies there of times past and present, enchanted in
various strange shapes, and among them he had recognised Queen Guinevere
and her dame Quintanona, she who poured out the wine for Lancelot when he
came from Britain."

When Sancho Panza heard his master say this he was ready to take leave of
his senses, or die with laughter; for, as he knew the real truth about
the pretended enchantment of Dulcinea, in which he himself had been the
enchanter and concocter of all the evidence, he made up his mind at last
that, beyond all doubt, his master was out of his wits and stark mad, so
he said to him, "It was an evil hour, a worse season, and a sorrowful
day, when your worship, dear master mine, went down to the other world,
and an unlucky moment when you met with Senor Montesinos, who has sent
you back to us like this. You were well enough here above in your full
senses, such as God had given you, delivering maxims and giving advice at
every turn, and not as you are now, talking the greatest nonsense that
can be imagined."

"As I know thee, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "I heed not thy words."

"Nor I your worship's," said Sancho, "whether you beat me or kill me for
those I have spoken, and will speak if you don't correct and mend your
own. But tell me, while we are still at peace, how or by what did you
recognise the lady our mistress; and if you spoke to her, what did you
say, and what d