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“The truth is, Señora,” responded Sancho, “that I never abused drink, though I might have been thirsty, because I’m no hypocrite; I drink when I want to, and when I don’t want to, and when somebody offers me a drink so as not to seem finicky or impolite; to toast a friend, whose heart is so like marble that he won’t lift a glass? But even if I do, I never dirty it, since the squires of knights errant almost always drink water, because they’re always traveling through woods, forests, and meadows, mountains and cliffs, without finding a charitable drop of wine even if they’d give an eye for it.”

“I believe that,” responded the duchess. “And for now, Sancho should go and rest, and we will speak at length later, and give the order to quickly pass this governorship, as he says, on to him.”

Sancho again kissed the hands of the duchess and implored her to be so kind as to take good care of his gray, because he was the light of his eyes.

“What gray is that?” asked the duchess.

“My jackass,” responded Sancho, “and so as not to call him by that name, I usually call him the gray, and when I entered this castle I asked this Señora Duenna to take care of him, and she got as angry as if I had called her ugly or old, since it must be more fitting and natural for duennas to give a thought to donkeys than to claim authority in castle halls. Oh, and Lord save me, what a dislike a nobleman from my village had for these ladies!”

“He must have been some peasant,” said Doña Rodríguez the duenna, “because if he were noble and wellborn, he would have praised them to the skies.”

“Well now,” said the duchess, “that’s enough: Doña Rodríguez, be still, and Señor Panza, calm down, and let me take care of looking after this gray, for if he is Sancho’s jewel, I shall value him more highly than the apple of my eye.”

“It’s enough if he’s in the stable,” responded Sancho. “As for being valued more highly than the apple of your highness’s eye, he and I aren’t worthy of that even for an instant, and I would no more agree to it than to being stabbed; though my master says that in courtesies it’s better to lose by a card too many than a card too few, as far as donkeys and apples are concerned, you have to go with your compass in hand, and at a measured pace.”

“Let Sancho take him to his governorship,” said the duchess, “and there he can treat him as nicely as he wants, and even keep him from hard labor.”

“Your grace should not think, Señora Duchess, that you have said anything remarkable,” said Sancho, “for I have seen more than two jackasses go into governorships, and if I take mine with me, it won’t be anything new.”

Sancho’s words renewed the duchess’s laughter and delight, and after sending him to rest, she went to recount to the duke her conversation with Sancho; and between the two of them, they arranged and planned to play tricks on Don Quixote that would be remarkable and consonant with the chivalric style; and they devised so many, and ones so appropriate and clever, that they are some of the best adventures contained in this great history.

CHAPTER XXXIV

Which recounts the information that was received regarding how the peerless Dulcinea of Toboso was to be disenchanted, which is one of the most famous adventures in this book

The duke and the duchess received great pleasure from Don Quixote’s conversation and that of Sancho Panza; they confirmed their intention of playing some tricks that would have the appearance and semblance of adventures, basing their plan on what Don Quixote had already told them about the Cave of Montesinos in order to create for him an adventure that would be famous—though what most astonished the duchess was Sancho’s simplemindedness, so great that he had come to believe as an infallible truth that Dulcinea of Toboso was enchanted when he himself had been the enchanter and deceiver in that affair—and so, having given orders to their servants regarding everything they had to do, six days later they took Don Quixote