nce into mine. I
strive to make peace between those whom I know to be at variance; I am
the devoted servant of Our Lady, and my trust is ever in the infinite
mercy of God our Lord."

Sancho listened with the greatest attention to the account of the
gentleman's life and occupation; and thinking it a good and a holy life,
and that he who led it ought to work miracles, he threw himself off
Dapple, and running in haste seized his right stirrup and kissed his foot
again and again with a devout heart and almost with tears.

Seeing this the gentleman asked him, "What are you about, brother? What
are these kisses for?"

"Let me kiss," said Sancho, "for I think your worship is the first saint
in the saddle I ever saw all the days of my life."

"I am no saint," replied the gentleman, "but a great sinner; but you are,
brother, for you must be a good fellow, as your simplicity shows."

Sancho went back and regained his pack-saddle, having extracted a laugh
from his master's profound melancholy, and excited fresh amazement in Don
Diego. Don Quixote then asked him how many children he had, and observed
that one of the things wherein the ancient philosophers, who were without
the true knowledge of God, placed the summum bonum was in the gifts of
nature, in those of fortune, in having many friends, and many and good
children.

"I, Senor Don Quixote," answered the gentleman, "have one son, without
whom, perhaps, I should count myself happier than I am, not because he is
a bad son, but because he is not so good as I could wish. He is eighteen
years of age; he has been for six at Salamanca studying Latin and Greek,
and when I wished him to turn to the study of other sciences I found him
so wrapped up in that of poetry (if that can be called a science) that
there is no getting him to take kindly to the law, which I wished him to
study, or to theology, the queen of them all. I would like him to be an
honour to his family, as we live in days when our kings liberally reward
learning that is virtuous and worthy; for learning without virtue is a
pearl on a dunghill. He spends the whole day in settling whether Homer
expressed himself correctly or not in such and such a line of the Iliad,
whether Martial was indecent or not in such and such an epigram, whether
such and such lines of Virgil are to be understood in this way or in
that; in short, all his talk is of the works of these poets, and those of
Horace, Perseus, Juvenal, and Tibullus;