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“The error doesn’t lie there,” replied Sansón, “but in the fact that before the donkey appeared, the author says that Sancho was riding on that same animal.”

“I don’t know how to answer that,” said Sancho, “except to say that either the historian was wrong or the printer made a mistake.”

“That must be the case, no doubt about it,” said Sansón, “but what happened to the hundred escudos? Are they gone?”

“I spent them for myself, and my wife, and my children, and they are the reason my wife patiently puts up with my traveling highways and byways in the service of my master, Don Quixote; if after so much time I came back home without a blanca and without my donkey, a black future would be waiting for me; if there’s any more to know about me, here I am, and I’ll answer the king himself in person, and nobody has any reason to worry about whether I kept them or didn’t keep them, spent them or didn’t spend them; if the beatings I got on these journeys were paid for in money, even if they didn’t cost more than four maravedís a piece, another hundred escudos wouldn’t pay for half of them; so let each man put his hand over his own heart and not start judging white as black and black as white; each of us is as God made him, and often much worse.”

“I’ll be sure,” said Carrasco, “to tell the author of the history that if it has a second printing, he should not forget what our good Sancho has said, for that would elevate it a good half-span higher than it is now.”

“Is there anything else that needs to be corrected in the book, Señor Bachelor?” asked Don Quixote.

“I’m sure there is,” he responded, “but nothing as important as the ones we’ve already mentioned.”

“And by any chance,” said Don Quixote, “does the author promise a second part?”

“Yes, he does,” responded Sansón, “but he says he hasn’t found it and doesn’t know who has it, and so we don’t know if it will be published or not; for this reason, and because some people say: ‘Second parts were never very good,’ and others say: ‘What’s been written about Don Quixote is enough,’ there is some doubt there will be a second part; but certain people who are more jovial than saturnine say: ‘Let’s have more quixoticies: let Don Quixote go charging and Sancho Panza keep talking, and whatever else happens, that will make us happy.’”

“And what does the author say to all of this?”

“He says,” responded Sansón, “that as soon as he finds the history, which he is searching for with extraordinary diligence, he will immediately have it printed, for he is more interested in earning his profit than in winning any praise.”

Sancho responded to this by saying:

“The author’s interested in money and profit? I’d be surprised if he got any, because all he’ll do is rush rush rush, like a tailor on the night before a holiday, and work done in a hurry is never as perfect as it should be. Let this Moorish gentleman, or whatever he is, pay attention to what he’s doing; my master and I will give him such an abundance of adventures and so many different deeds that he’ll be able to write not just a second part, but a hundred more parts. No doubt about it, the good man must think we’re asleep here; well, just let him try to shoe us, and he’ll know if we’re lame or not. What I can say is that if my master would take my advice, we’d already be out in those fields righting wrongs and undoing injustices, which is the habit and custom of good knights errant.”

No sooner had Sancho said these words than the sound of Rocinante neighing reached their ears; Don Quixote took this as a very good omen and resolved that in three or four days he would undertake another sally, and after declaring his intention to the bachelor, he asked his advice as to the direction he should take on his journey; the bachelor responded that in his opinion, he ought to go to the kingdom of Aragón and the city of Zaragoza, where in a few days they would be holding solemn jousts for the Festival of San Jorge, and there he could win fame vanquishing all the Aragonese knights, which would be the same as vanquishing