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The night was somewhat dark although the moon was in the sky, but not in a place where she could be seen: perhaps the lady Diana had taken a trip to the Antipodes and left the mountains black and the valleys dark. Don Quixote fulfilled his obligations to nature by sleeping his first sleep,1 but not giving way to his second, unlike Sancho, who never had a second sleep because his sleep lasted from nightfall until morning, proving he had a strong constitution and few cares. Those of Don Quixote kept him awake until he woke Sancho and said:

“I am astounded, Sancho, at your carefree disposition: I imagine that you are made of marble or hard bronze, and that feeling or sentiment has no place in you. I keep vigil while you sleep, I weep while you sing, I swoon from fasting while you are lazy and sluggish from sheer satiety. It is in the nature of good servants to share the griefs of their masters and to feel what they are feeling, if only for appearance’s sake. Look at the serenity of this night and the solitude of this place, inviting us to mingle some wakefulness with our sleep. Get up, for the love of God, and go a little distance from here, and with good courage and the boldness of gratitude give yourself three or four hundred of the lashes you owe for the disenchantment of Dulcinea; I plead with you to do this; I do not wish to come to blows with you, as we did last time, because I know you have a heavy hand. After you have flogged yourself, we shall spend what remains of the night singing, I of my absent love, and you of your valor, thereby beginning the pastoral life we shall practice in our village.”

“Señor,” responded Sancho, “I’m not a monk who wakes up in the middle of the night to discipline myself, and I also don’t think anybody can feel the extreme pain of a whipping and then start singing music. Your grace should let me sleep and stop pressing me about the lashes, or you’ll force me to swear that I’ll never even touch a thread of my tunic, let alone my flesh.”

“O unfeeling soul! O pitiless squire! O undeserved bread and unthinking favors that I have given to you and intend to give to you in the future! Because of me you found yourself a governor, and because of me you have hopes of becoming a count or receiving another equivalent title, and the fulfillment of those hopes will take no longer than the time it takes for this year to pass, for Post tenebras spero lucem.2

“I don’t understand that,” replied Sancho. “I only understand that while I’m sleeping I have no fear, or hope, or trouble, or glory; blessed be whoever invented sleep, the mantle that covers all human thought, the food that satisfies hunger, the water that quenches thirst, the fire that warms the cold, the cold that cools down ardor, and, finally, the general coin with which all things are bought, the scale and balance that make the shepherd equal to the king, and the simple man equal to the wise. There is only one defect in sleep, or so I’ve heard, and it is that it resembles death, for there is very little difference between a man who is sleeping and a man who is dead.”

“I have never heard you speak, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “as elegantly as now, which leads me to recognize the truth of the proverb that you like to quote: ‘It is not where you were born but who your friends are now that counts.’”

“Ah, confound it, Señor!” replied Sancho. “Now I’m not the one stringing proverbs together; they also drop two by two from your grace’s mouth better than they do from mine, but between my proverbs and yours there must be this difference: your grace’s come at the right time, while mine are out of place, but in fact they’re all proverbs.”

They were engaged in this conversation when they heard a deafening sound and a harsh noise that extended through all the valleys. Don Quixote rose to his feet and put his hand to his sword, and Sancho crouched under the gray, pulling the armor down on one side and his donkey’s packsaddle down on the other, trembling from fear as much as Don Quixote trembled from excitement. Gradually the noise grew