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The duchess told the duke and asked his leave to go with Altisidora to see what that duenna wanted with Don Quixote; the duke agreed, and the two women, with very cautious and silent steps, approached the door of his room, and stood so close they could hear everything that was said inside; and when the duchess heard Doña Rodríguez disclose the Aranjuez of her flowing issues,2 she could not bear it, and neither could Altisidora; and so, filled with rage and longing for vengeance, they burst into the room, and riddled Don Quixote with wounds, and beat the duenna in the manner that has been recounted, because affronts directed against the beauty and vanity of women awaken in them an immense anger and kindle their desire to take revenge.

The duchess told the duke what had happened, which he enjoyed hearing very much, and the duchess, moving ahead with her intention of deceiving Don Quixote and deriving pleasure from that, dispatched the page who had played the part of Dulcinea in the performance concerning her disenchantment—which Sancho Panza had forgotten in his preoccupation with governing—to Teresa Panza, his wife, with the letter from her husband, and another from her, as well as a long string of fine corals as a present.

The history tells us, then, that the page was very clever and witty, and, desiring to serve his master and mistress, he left very willingly for Sancho’s village; before entering it, he saw a number of women washing clothes in a stream, and he asked them if they could tell him if a woman named Teresa Panza, the wife of a certain Sancho Panza, who was squire to a knight named Don Quixote of La Mancha, lived in that village; and when he had asked the question, a girl who was washing rose to her feet and said:

“Teresa Panza is my mother, and Sancho is my father, and that knight is our master.”

“Then come along, my girl,” said the page, “and take me to your mother, because I have a letter and a present for her from your father.”

“I’ll do that very gladly, Señor,” responded the girl, who looked about fourteen years old.

And leaving the clothes she was washing with a friend, without covering her head or putting on shoes, though she was barefoot and disheveled, she jumped in front of the page’s horse and said:

“Come, your grace, for our house is at the entrance to the village, and my mother is in it, filled with grief because she hasn’t heard anything from my father for so many days.”

“Well, I’m bringing her news so good,” said the page, “that she’ll have to give thanks to God for it.”

Jumping, running, and leaping, the girl finally reached the village, and before entering her house, she called from the door:

“Come out, Teresa, come out, Mother, come out, come out, because here’s a gentleman who’s bringing letters and other things from my good father.”

At her call, Teresa Panza, her mother, came out, spinning a bunch of flax and wearing a dun-colored skirt so short it looked as if it had been cut to shame her,3 a bodice that was also dun colored, and a chemise. She was not very old, although she looked over forty, but she was strong, hard, vigorous, and as brown as a hazelnut; and seeing her daughter, and the page on horseback, she said:

“What’s this, girl? Who’s this gentleman?”

“A servant of my lady Doña Teresa Panza,” responded the page.

And having said this, he leaped down from the horse and went very humbly to kneel before Señora Teresa, saying:

“Your grace, give me your hands, my lady Doña Teresa, which you are as the sole legitimate wife of Señor Don Sancho Panza, governor of the ínsula of Barataria.”

“Oh, Señor, get up, don’t do that,” responded Teresa. “I have nothing to do with palaces, I’m a poor peasant, the daughter of a farmer and the wife of a squire errant, not of any governor!”

“Your grace,” responded the page, “is most worthy of a most archworthy governor, and to prove this truth, here are a letter and a present for your grace.”

And he immediately took from his pocket a string of corals with gold beads and put it around her neck, saying: