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“Good God, what palace am I supposed to lead to,” responded Sancho, “when the place where I saw her highness was only a very small house?”

“She must have withdrawn, at that time,” responded Don Quixote, “to a small apartment in her castle, finding solace alone with her damsels, as is the practice and custom of noble ladies and princesses.”

“Señor,” said Sancho, “since your grace insists, in spite of what I say, that the house of my lady Dulcinea is a castle, do you think we’ll find the door open at this hour? And would it be a good idea for us to knock loud enough for them to hear us and open the door, disturbing everybody with the noise we make? Are we by chance calling at the houses of our kept women, where we can visit and knock at the door and go in any time we want no matter how late it is?”

“Before we do anything else, let us first find the castle,” replied Don Quixote, “and then I shall tell you, Sancho, what it would be good for us to do. And listen, Sancho, either I cannot see very well or that large shape and its shadow over there must be the palace of Dulcinea.”

“Well, your grace, lead the way,” responded Sancho, “and maybe it will be, though even if I saw it with my eyes and touched it with my hands, I’d believe it the way I believe it’s daytime now.”

Don Quixote led the way, and after some two hundred paces he came to the shape that was casting the shadow, and he saw a high tower, and then he realized that the building was not a castle but the principal church of the town. And he said:

“We have come to the church, Sancho.”2

“I can see that,” responded Sancho. “And may it please God that we don’t come to our graves; it’s not a good idea to walk through cemeteries at this hour of the night, especially since I told your grace, if I remember correctly, that the lady’s house is in a little dead-end lane.”

“May God damn you for a fool!” said Don Quixote. “Where have you ever found castles and royal palaces built in little dead-end lanes?”

“Señor,” responded Sancho, “each place has its ways: maybe here in Toboso the custom is to build palaces and large buildings in lanes, and so I beg your grace to let me look along these streets and lanes that I see here; maybe at some corner I’ll run into that castle, and I hope I see it devoured by dogs for bringing us such a weary long way.”

“Speak with respect, Sancho, of the things that pertain to my lady,” said Don Quixote, “and let us be patient: we shall not give up.”

“I’ll control myself,” responded Sancho, “but how can I be patient if I saw our lady’s house only one time but your grace wants me to know it forever and find it in the middle of the night, when your grace can’t find it and you must have seen it thousands of times?”

“You make me despair, Sancho,” said Don Quixote. “Come here, you scoundrel: have I not told you a thousand times that in all the days of my life I have not seen the peerless Dulcinea, and I have never crossed the threshold of her palace, and I am in love only because I have heard of the great fame she has for beauty and discernment?”

“Now I hear it,” responded Sancho, “and I say that just as your grace has not seen her, neither have I.”

“That cannot be,” replied Don Quixote. “At least you told me that you saw her sifting wheat, when you brought me her answer to the letter I sent with you.”

“Don’t depend on that, Señor,” responded Sancho, “because I want you to know that I only heard about seeing her and bringing you her answer, and I have as much idea who the lady Dulcinea is as I have chances to punch the sky.”

“Sancho, Sancho,” responded Don Quixote, “there is a time for jokes and a time when jokes are inappropriate and out of place. Simply because I say I have not seen or spoken to the lady of my soul, it does not mean that you must also say you have not spoken to her or seen her, when just the opposite is true, as you well know.”

They were engaged in this conversation when they saw a man with two mules coming toward them, and by the noise he made with the