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“Those are qualities,” responded the Squire of the Wood, “for being not only a countess but a nymph of the greenwood. O whoreson, but that damned little whore must be strong!”

To which Sancho replied, rather crossly:

“She isn’t a whore, and neither was her mother, and neither of them will ever be one, God willing, as long as I’m alive. And speak more politely; for somebody who’s spent time with knights errant, who are courtesy itself, your grace isn’t very careful about your words.”

“Oh, Señor Squire, how little your grace understands,” replied the Squire of the Wood, “about paying a compliment! Can it be that you don’t know that when a knight gives the bull in the square a good thrust with the lance, or when anybody does anything well, commoners always say: ‘Oh whoreson, but that damned little whoreson did that well!’? And in that phrase, what seems to be an insult is a wonderful compliment, and you should disavow, Señor, any sons or daughters who do not perform deeds that bring their parents that kind of praise.”

“I do disavow them,” responded Sancho, “and in that sense and for that reason your grace could dump a whole whorehouse on me and my children and my wife, because everything they do and say deserves the best compliments, and I want to see them again so much that I pray God to deliver me from mortal sin, which would be the same as delivering me from this dangerous squirely work that I’ve fallen into for a second time, tempted and lured by a purse with a hundred ducados that I found one day in the heart of the Sierra Morena; and the devil places before my eyes, here, there, not here but over there, a sack filled with doblones, and at every step I take I seem to touch it with my hand, and put my arms around it, and take it to my house, and hold mortgages, and collect rents, and live like a prince, and when I’m thinking about that, all the trials I suffer with this simpleton of a master seem easy to bear, even though I know he’s more of a madman than a knight.”

“That,” responded the Squire of the Wood, “is why they say that it’s greed that tears the sack, and if we’re going to talk about madmen, there’s nobody in the world crazier than my master, because he’s one of those who say: ‘Other people’s troubles kill the donkey,’ and to help another knight find the wits he’s lost, he pretends to be crazy and goes around looking for something that I think will hit him right in the face when he finds it.”

“Is he in love, by any chance?”

“Yes,” said the Squire of the Wood, “with a certain Casildea of Vandalia, the cruelest lady in the world, and the hardest to stomach, but indigestibility isn’t her greatest fault; her other deceits are growling in his belly, and they’ll make themselves heard before too many hours have gone by.”

“There’s no road so smooth,” replied Sancho, “that it doesn’t have some obstacle or stumbling block; they cook beans everywhere, but in my house they do it by the potful; craziness must have more companions and friends than wisdom. But if what they say is true, that misery loves company, then I can find comfort with your grace, because you serve a master who’s as great a fool as mine.”

“A fool, but brave,” responded the Squire of the Wood, “and more of a scoundrel than foolish or brave.”

“Not mine,” responded Sancho. “I mean, there’s nothing of the scoundrel in him; mine’s as innocent as a baby; he doesn’t know how to harm anybody, he can only do good to everybody, and there’s no malice in him: a child could convince him it’s night in the middle of the day, and because he’s simple I love him with all my heart and couldn’t leave him no matter how many crazy things he does.”

“Even so, Señor,” said the Squire of the Wood, “if the blind man leads the blind man, they’re both in danger of falling into the ditch. Brother, we’d better leave soon and go back where we came from; people who look for adventures don’t always find good ones.”

Sancho had been spitting often, it seems, a certain kind of sticky, dry saliva, and the charitable woodish squire, seeing and noting this,