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Don Quixote did so, and in his shirtsleeves he covered Sancho, who slept until he was awakened by the sun, and then they continued their journey, which they brought to a halt, for the time being, in a village three leagues away. They dismounted at an inn, which Don Quixote took to be an inn and not a castle with a deep moat, towers, portcullises, and drawbridges, for after he was defeated he thought with sounder judgment about everything, as will be recounted now. He was lodged in a room on the ground floor, and hanging on its walls were the kind of old painted tapestries still used in villages. On one of them was painted, very badly, the abduction of Helen, at the moment the audacious guest stole her away from Menelaus,4 and the other showed the history of Dido and Aeneas: she stood on a high tower and signaled with a large cloth to her fugitive guest, who fled by sea on a frigate or brigantine.

He noted in the two histories that Helen did not go very unwillingly, for she was laughing, slyly and cunningly, but the beautiful Dido seemed to shed tears the size of walnuts, and seeing this, Don Quixote said:

“These two ladies were extremely unfortunate because they were not born in this age, and I am the most unfortunate of men because I was not born in theirs: if I had encountered these gentlemen, Troy would not have been burned, nor Carthage destroyed, for simply by my killing Paris, so many misfortunes would have been avoided.”5

“I’ll wager,” said Sancho, “that before long there won’t be a tavern, an inn, a hostelry, or a barbershop where the history of our deeds isn’t painted. But I’d like it done by the hands of a painter better than the one who did these.”

“You are right, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “because this painter is like Orbaneja, a painter in Úbeda, who, when asked what he was painting, would respond: ‘Whatever comes out.’ And if he happened to be painting a rooster, he would write beneath it: ‘This is a rooster,’ so that no one would think it was a fox. And that, it seems to me, Sancho, is how the painter or writer—for it amounts to the same thing—must be who brought out the history of this new Don Quixote: he painted or wrote whatever came out; or he may have been like a poet who was at court some years ago, whose name was Mauleón; when asked a question, he would say the first thing that came into his head, and once when asked the meaning of Deum de Deo, he responded: ‘Dim down the drummer.’6 But leaving that aside, tell me, Sancho, if you intend to administer another set of lashes tonight, and if you wish it to take place under a roof or out of doors.”

“By God, Señor,” responded Sancho, “considering how I plan to whip myself, a house would be as good as a field, but even so, I’d like it to be under the trees, because they seem like companions and help me to bear this burden wonderfully well.”

“It should not be like this, Sancho my friend,” responded Don Quixote. “Instead, so that you can regain your strength, we should save this for our village, where we shall arrive the day after tomorrow at the latest.”

Sancho responded that he would do as his master wished but would like to conclude this matter quickly, while his blood was hot and the grindstone rough, because in delay there is often danger, and pray to God and use the hammer, and one “here you are” was worth more than two “I’ll give it to you,” and a bird in hand was worth two in the bush.

“By the one God, Sancho, no more proverbs,” said Don Quixote. “It seems you are going back to sicut erat;7 speak plainly, and simply, and without complications, as I have often told you, and you will see how one loaf will be the same as a hundred for you.”

“I don’t know why I’m so unlucky,” responded Sancho, “that I can’t say a word without a proverb, and every proverb seems exactly right to me, but I’ll change, if I can.”

And with this their conversation came to an end.

CHAPTER LXXII

Concerning how Don Quixote and Sancho arrived in their village

Don Quixote and Sancho spent the entire day in that village and in that inn, waiting for nightfall, the