HELD WITH
SANCHO PANZA, WELL WORTH READING AND NOTING

The history records that Sancho did not sleep that afternoon, but in
order to keep his word came, before he had well done dinner, to visit the
duchess, who, finding enjoyment in listening to him, made him sit down
beside her on a low seat, though Sancho, out of pure good breeding,
wanted not to sit down; the duchess, however, told him he was to sit down
as governor and talk as squire, as in both respects he was worthy of even
the chair of the Cid Ruy Diaz the Campeador. Sancho shrugged his
shoulders, obeyed, and sat down, and all the duchess's damsels and
duennas gathered round him, waiting in profound silence to hear what he
would say. It was the duchess, however, who spoke first, saying:

"Now that we are alone, and that there is nobody here to overhear us, I
should be glad if the senor governor would relieve me of certain doubts I
have, rising out of the history of the great Don Quixote that is now in
print. One is: inasmuch as worthy Sancho never saw Dulcinea, I mean the
lady Dulcinea del Toboso, nor took Don Quixote's letter to her, for it
was left in the memorandum book in the Sierra Morena, how did he dare to
invent the answer and all that about finding her sifting wheat, the whole
story being a deception and falsehood, and so much to the prejudice of
the peerless Dulcinea's good name, a thing that is not at all becoming
the character and fidelity of a good squire?"

At these words, Sancho, without uttering one in reply, got up from his
chair, and with noiseless steps, with his body bent and his finger on his
lips, went all round the room lifting up the hangings; and this done, he
came back to his seat and said, "Now, senora, that I have seen that there
is no one except the bystanders listening to us on the sly, I will answer
what you have asked me, and all you may ask me, without fear or dread.
And the first thing I have got to say is, that for my own part I hold my
master Don Quixote to be stark mad, though sometimes he says things that,
to my mind, and indeed everybody's that listens to him, are so wise, and
run in such a straight furrow, that Satan himself could not have said
them better; but for all that, really, and beyond all question, it's my
firm belief he is cracked. Well, then, as this is clear to my mind, I can
venture to make him believe things that have neither head nor tail, like
that affair of the answer to the letter, and that other of si