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By Root 1048 0

would have left my master days ago. But this is my fate and this is my misfortune; I can’t help it; I have to follow him: we’re from the same village, I’ve eaten his bread, I love him dearly, he’s a grateful man, he gave me his donkeys, and more than anything else, I’m faithful; and so it’s impossible for anything to separate us except the man with the pick and shovel.2And if your highness doesn’t want me to have the governorship I’ve been promised, God made me without it, and maybe not giving it to me will be for the good of my conscience; I may be a fool, but I understand the proverb that says, ‘It did him harm when the ant grew wings,’ and it might even be that Sancho the squire will enter heaven more easily than Sancho the governor. The bread they bake here is as good as in France, and at night every cat is gray, and the person who hasn’t eaten by two in the afternoon has more than enough misfortune, and no stomach’s so much bigger than any other that it can’t be filled, as they say, with straw and hay,3 and the little birds of the field have God to protect and provide for them, and four varas of flannel from Cuenca will warm you more than four of limiste4 from Segovia, and when we leave this world and go into the ground, the path of the prince is as narrow as the laborer’s, and the pope’s body doesn’t need more room underground than the sacristan’s, even if one is higher than the other, because when we’re in the grave we all have to adjust and shrink or they make us adjust and shrink, whether we want to or not, and that’s the end of it. And I say again that if your ladyship doesn’t want to give me the ínsula because I’m a fool, I’ll be smart enough not to care at all; I’ve heard that the devil hides behind the cross, and that all that glitters isn’t gold, and that from his oxen, plows, and yokes they took the peasant Wamba to be king of Spain,5 and from his brocades, entertainments, and riches they took Rodrigo to be eaten by snakes, if the lines from the old ballads don’t lie.”

“Of course they don’t lie!” said Doña Rodríguez the duenna, who was among those listening. “There’s a ballad that says they put King Rodrigo alive and kicking into a tomb filled with toads and snakes and lizards, and two days later, from inside the tomb, the king said in a low and mournful voice:

They’re eating me, they’re eating

me in the place where I sinned most;

and so this gentleman is very correct when he says he’d rather be a peasant than a king if vermin are going to eat him.”

The duchess could not control her laughter when she heard her duenna’s simplemindedness, nor could she help but marvel at Sancho’s words and proverbs, and she said to him:

“Our good Sancho already knows that what a knight has promised he attempts to fulfill, even if it costs him his life. The duke, my lord and husband, though not a knight errant, is still a knight, and so he will keep his word regarding the promised ínsula, despite the world’s envy and malice. Sancho should be of good heart, for when he least expects it he will find himself seated on the throne of his ínsula and of his estate, and he will hold his governorship in his hand and not trade it for another of three-pile brocade.6 My charge to him is that he attend to how he governs his vassals, knowing that all of them are loyal and wellborn.”

“As for governing them well,” responded Sancho, “there’s no need to charge me with it, because I’m charitable by nature and have compassion for the poor; and if he kneads and bakes, you can’t steal his cakes; by my faith, they won’t throw me any crooked dice; I’m an old dog and understand every here, boy,7 and I know how to wake up at the right time, and I don’t allow cobwebs in front of my eyes, because I know if the shoe fits: I say this because with me good men will have my hand and a place in my house,8 and bad men won’t get a foot or permission to enter. And it seems to me that in this business of governorships it’s all a matter of starting, and it may be that after two weeks of being a governor I’ll be licking my lips over the work and know more