e to the world, there would be nothing he could
not do, from building cages to making toothpicks.

Just then there was a knock at the door. It was Sancho Panza. As soon
as the housekeeper learned it was he, she fled from the room, for she
had grown to detest him like sin itself. The niece opened the door for
him, and he hastened to his master's room, where he was welcomed by
Don Quixote. And soon they were in the midst of a conversation, which
took place behind locked doors.

CHAPTER VII

OF WHAT PASSED BETWEEN DON QUIXOTE AND HIS SQUIRE, TOGETHER
WITH OTHER VERY NOTABLE INCIDENTS

As soon as the housekeeper heard Don Quixote turn the key in the door,
she realized the urgency of the situation, put on her shawl, and ran
to the house of the bachelor Samson Carrasco. She knew that her master
had taken a fancy to this learned young man and thought he might be
able to persuade him to give up the crazy idea. She fell on her knees
before Samson and told him in excited language that her master had
broken out again.

"Where is he breaking out?" asked the roguish bachelor.

"He is breaking out at the door of his madness," replied the
bewildered housekeeper. "I mean he is going to break out again, for
the third time, to hunt all over the world for what he calls
adventures."

And then she went on to say that his first sally ended in his being
brought back home, slung across the back of a donkey. The second time
he made his entry into the village in an ox-cart, shut up in a cage,
and looking so worn and emaciated that his own mother would not have
known him. The last escapade had been an extremely expensive one, for
it had taken no less than six hundred eggs to cover up his bones
again.

The bachelor quieted the housekeeper, and promised her to do all he
could for her master. Then he advised her to return home and prepare
something hot for breakfast, and on her way home to repeat the prayer of
Santa Appolonia. He himself would be there in time for breakfast, he
said. The housekeeper remonstrated with the bachelor for prescribing the
prayer of Santa Appolonia, which, she declared, was for toothache and not
for brains; but Samson told her to do as he bade her, reminding her that
he was a learned bachelor of Salamanca and knew what he was talking
about. The housekeeper then left, saying her prayer, and the bachelor
went to look for the curate that they might decide what to do.

In the meantime Don Quixote and Sancho