p on what God may
please to give me, instead of following your worship along roads that
lead nowhere and paths that are none at all, with little to drink and
less to eat. And then when it comes to sleeping! Measure out seven feet
on the earth, brother squire, and if that's not enough for you, take as
many more, for you may have it all your own way and stretch yourself to
your heart's content. Oh that I could see burnt and turned to ashes the
first man that meddled with knight-errantry or at any rate the first who
chose to be squire to such fools as all the knights-errant of past times
must have been! Of those of the present day I say nothing, because, as
your worship is one of them, I respect them, and because I know your
worship knows a point more than the devil in all you say and think."

"I would lay a good wager with you, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "that now
that you are talking on without anyone to stop you, you don't feel a pain
in your whole body. Talk away, my son, say whatever comes into your head
or mouth, for so long as you feel no pain, the irritation your
impertinences give me will be a pleasure to me; and if you are so anxious
to go home to your wife and children, God forbid that I should prevent
you; you have money of mine; see how long it is since we left our village
this third time, and how much you can and ought to earn every month, and
pay yourself out of your own hand."

"When I worked for Tom Carrasco, the father of the bachelor Samson
Carrasco that your worship knows," replied Sancho, "I used to earn two
ducats a month besides my food; I can't tell what I can earn with your
worship, though I know a knight-errant's squire has harder times of it
than he who works for a farmer; for after all, we who work for farmers,
however much we toil all day, at the worst, at night, we have our olla
supper and sleep in a bed, which I have not slept in since I have been in
your worship's service, if it wasn't the short time we were in Don Diego
de Miranda's house, and the feast I had with the skimmings I took off
Camacho's pots, and what I ate, drank, and slept in Basilio's house; all
the rest of the time I have been sleeping on the hard ground under the
open sky, exposed to what they call the inclemencies of heaven, keeping
life in me with scraps of cheese and crusts of bread, and drinking water
either from the brooks or from the springs we come to on these by-paths
we travel."

"I own, Sancho," said Don Quixote