Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [378]
“I would make a wager with you, Sancho,”3 said Don Quixote. “Now that you are speaking and no one is restraining you, you have no pains anywhere in your body. Speak, my friend, and say everything that comes to your mind and your mouth; in exchange for your not having any pains, I shall consider the irritation your impertinence causes me as pleasure. And if you so fervently desire to return to your house and wife and children, God forbid that I do anything to stop you; you have my money; calculate how long it has been since we left our village this third time, and calculate what you can and should earn each month, and pay yourself a salary.”
“When I served Tomé Carrasco,” responded Sancho, “the father of Bachelor Sansón Carrasco, and your grace knows him very well, I earned two ducados a month, and food besides; with your grace I don’t know what I should earn, though I know that the squire of a knight errant has more work than a man who serves a farmer, because when we serve farmers, no matter how much we work during the day, and no matter what bad things happen to us, at night we eat stew and sleep in beds, which I haven’t done since I started serving your grace. Except for the short time we were in Don Diego de Miranda’s house, and the outing I had with the skimmings I took from Camacho’s pots, and the way I ate and drank and slept in Basilio’s house, all the rest of the time I’ve slept on the hard ground, outside, exposed to what they call the inclemencies of heaven, eating crumbs of cheese and crusts of bread and drinking water from streams or springs or whatever we find in those out-of-the-way places where we travel.”
“I confess,” said Don Quixote, “that everything you say, Sancho, is true. In your opinion, how much more should I give you than Tomé Carrasco did?”
“In my opinion,” said Sancho, “if your grace added two reales more a month, I’d think I was well-paid. This is the salary for my work, but as far as satisfying your grace’s word and promise to make me governor of an ínsula, it would be fair to add another six reales, and that would be a total of thirty.”
“Very well,” replied Don Quixote, “and in accordance with the salary you have indicated, it has been twenty-five days since we left our village: calculate, Sancho, the rate times the amount, and see what I owe you, and pay yourself the money, as I have said.”
“Oh, Lord,” said Sancho, “your grace is very much mistaken in this count, because in the matter of the promise of the ínsula, you have to count from the day your grace promised it to me until this very moment.”
“Well, Sancho, how long ago did I promise it to you?” said Don Quixote.
“If I remember correctly,” responded Sancho, “it must be more than twenty years, give or take three days.”
Don Quixote gave himself a great slap on the forehead and began to laugh very heartily, and he said:
“My travels in the Sierra Morena or in the course of all our sallies took barely two months, and you say, Sancho, that I promised you the ínsula twenty years ago? Now I say that you want to use all my money for your salary, and if this is true, and it makes you happy, I shall give it all to you, and may it do you good; in exchange for finding myself without so bad a squire, I shall enjoy being poor and not having a blanca. But tell me, you corrupter of the squirely rules of knight errantry, where have you seen or read that any squire of a knight errant has engaged his master in ‘You have to give me this amount plus that amount every month for serving you’? Set sail, set sail, scoundrel, coward, monster, for you seem to be all three,