he Sierra Morena: a kindness for which
he afterwards got poor thanks and worse payment from that evil-minded,
ill-conditioned set. This Gines de Pasamonte--Don Ginesillo de Parapilla,
Don Quixote called him--it was that stole Dapple from Sancho Panza;
which, because by the fault of the printers neither the how nor the when
was stated in the First Part, has been a puzzle to a good many people,
who attribute to the bad memory of the author what was the error of the
press. In fact, however, Gines stole him while Sancho Panza was asleep on
his back, adopting the plan and device that Brunello had recourse to when
he stole Sacripante's horse from between his legs at the siege of
Albracca; and, as has been told, Sancho afterwards recovered him. This
Gines, then, afraid of being caught by the officers of justice, who were
looking for him to punish him for his numberless rascalities and offences
(which were so many and so great that he himself wrote a big book giving
an account of them), resolved to shift his quarters into the kingdom of
Aragon, and cover up his left eye, and take up the trade of a
puppet-showman; for this, as well as juggling, he knew how to practise to
perfection. From some released Christians returning from Barbary, it so
happened, he bought the ape, which he taught to mount upon his shoulder
on his making a certain sign, and to whisper, or seem to do so, in his
ear. Thus prepared, before entering any village whither he was bound with
his show and his ape, he used to inform himself at the nearest village,
or from the most likely person he could find, as to what particular
things had happened there, and to whom; and bearing them well in mind,
the first thing he did was to exhibit his show, sometimes one story,
sometimes another, but all lively, amusing, and familiar. As soon as the
exhibition was over he brought forward the accomplishments of his ape,
assuring the public that he divined all the past and the present, but as
to the future he had no skill. For each question answered he asked two
reals, and for some he made a reduction, just as he happened to feel the
pulse of the questioners; and when now and then he came to houses where
things that he knew of had happened to the people living there, even if
they did not ask him a question, not caring to pay for it, he would make
the sign to the ape and then declare that it had said so and so, which
fitted the case exactly. In this way he acquired a prodigious name