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In this fashion, prices were set for many other destroyed puppets, which were later modified by the two arbitrating judges to the satisfaction of all parties and reached a total of forty and three-quarters reales; in addition to this amount, which Sancho immediately took out of the purse and paid to him, Master Pedro requested two reales for the effort of catching the monkey.

“Give them to him, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “not for catching the monkey, but for bending his elbow;8 and I would give two hundred more as a reward to the person who could tell me with certainty that Señora Doña Melisendra and Señor Don Gaiferos were in France now with their people.”

“No one could tell us that better than my monkey,” said Master Pedro, “but not even the devil can catch him now, though I imagine that affection and hunger will force him to look for me tonight, and God will bring the dawn, and then we’ll see.”

In short, the storm over the puppet show came to an end, and everyone ate supper in peace and good fellowship, at Don Quixote’s expense, for he was generous in the extreme.

Before daybreak the man carrying the lances and halberds left, and shortly after dawn the cousin and the page came to take their leave of Don Quixote: the one to return home and the other to continue his journey, and to help him on his way, Don Quixote gave the page a dozen reales. Master Pedro did not wish to engage in further disputes with Don Quixote, whom he knew very well, and so he arose before the sun, and after gathering up the relics of his puppet theater, and his monkey, he also set out to seek adventures. The innkeeper, who did not know Don Quixote, was as astonished by his madness as by his generosity. To conclude, Sancho paid him very well, by order of his master, and when it was almost eight in the morning they said goodbye, left the inn, and took to the road, where we shall leave them, for that will afford us the opportunity to recount other things that are pertinent to the narration of this famous history.

CHAPTER XXVII

In which the identities of Master Pedro and his monkey are revealed, as well as the unhappy outcome of the braying adventure, which Don Quixote did not conclude as he had wished and intended

Cide Hamete, the chronicler of this great history, begins this chapter with the words I swear as a Catholic Christian…, to which his translator says that Cide Hamete swearing as a Catholic Christian when he was a Moor, which he undoubtedly was, meant only that just as the Catholic Christian, when he swears, swears or should swear the truth, and tell the truth in everything he says, so too he was telling the truth, as if he were swearing as a Catholic Christian, when he wrote about Don Quixote, especially when he told who Master Pedro was, as well as the sooth-saying monkey who had amazed all those towns and villages with his divinations.

He says, then, that whoever read the first part of this history will remember very clearly Ginés de Pasamonte, to whom, along with the other galley slaves, Don Quixote gave his freedom in the Sierra Morena, a charitable act that was repaid with ingratitude and thanklessness by those ill-intentioned and badly behaved people. This Ginés de Pasamonte, whom Don Quixote called Ginesillo de Parapilla, was the man who stole Sancho Panza’s donkey; and since the how and when of that theft were not included in the first part through an error of the printers, many have been led to attribute this printing error to the author’s defective memory. To be brief, Ginés stole the donkey when Sancho was sleeping on its back, using the same trick and device that Brunelo used when Sacripante was at Albraca and he took the horse out from between his legs, and then Sancho recovered the donkey, as has already been recounted. This Ginés, fearful of being captured by the officers of the law who were looking for him so that he could be punished for his infinite deceptions and crimes, so numerous and of such a nature that he himself wrote a long book