Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Author:Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Published: 2003-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER IV

In which Sancho Panza provides the answers to the young graduate Sansón Carrasco’s doubts and questions; together with other events worth knowing and telling

Sancho Panza returned to Don Quixote’s house and to the previous conversation, and he said:

‘To what Senñor Sansón said about people wanting to know who stole my donkey, and how and when, it is my reply that on the very same night when we went to hide from the Holy Brotherhood in the Sierra Morena, after the adventure or misadventure of the convicts, and the other one of the dead body being taken to Segovia, me and my master rode into a clump of trees where my master leaned on his lance and I sat on my dun, both of us dead beat after the fights we’d had, and we dozed off just as if we were lying on half-a-dozen feather mattresses, and in particular I fell so very fast asleep that whoever it was managed to come and prop up the pack-saddle, with me sitting there and all, on top of four poles one in each corner, and get the dun out from underneath without me noticing a thing.’

‘That is easy enough to do, and no new occurrence: it is what happened to Sacripante when he was at the siege of Albracca and that famous thief Brunello removed his horse from between his legs using the same trick.’1

‘Dawn broke,’ Sancho resumed, ‘and as soon as I gave myself a good shake the poles caved in and I came down with an almighty thump, and I looked around for my donkey and I couldn’t find it, and the tears filled my eyes and I made such a lament that if the author of our history hasn’t put it in he can take it from me he hasn’t put anything worthwhile in. A few days later, I can’t rightly remember how many, I was walking along with Princess Micomicona when I spotted my donkey, and on top of it wearing gipsy clothes was that character Ginés de Pasamonte, that crook, that great villain me and my master set free from the chain.’

‘That isn’t the mistake,’ Sansón replied. ‘The mistake is that before the ass has reappeared the author says Sancho’s riding it!’

‘I don’t know what to say to that,’ said Sancho, ‘but maybe the historian got it wrong, or it might have been a slip of the printer’s.’

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ said Sansón, ‘but what happened to the hundred escudos? Did they disappear into thin air?’

Sancho replied:

‘I laid them out on the well-being of my person and of my wife and children, and those escudos are the only reason why my wife’s putting up with me going off along all those highways and byways serving my master Don Quixote, because if after all that time I’d come back home penniless and donkeyless I’d have been in for it – and if there’s anything else you want to know about me here I am, and I’ll answer to

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