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“What’s this gentleman’s name?” asked Maritornes the Asturian.

“Don Quixote of La Mancha,” replied Sancho Panza, “and he is an adventuring knight, and one of the best and strongest the world has seen in a long time.”

“What’s an adventuring knight?” the servant asked.

“Are you so new to the world that you don’t know?” replied Sancho Panza. “Well, let me tell you, my sister, in just a few words, that an adventuring knight is someone who’s beaten and then finds himself emperor. Today he’s the most unfortunate creature in the world, and the poorest, and tomorrow he’ll have the crowns of two or three kingdoms to give to his squire.”

“How is it, then, since you serve so good a master,” said the innkeeper’s wife, “that you, or so it seems, don’t even have a countship yet?”

“It’s still early,” Sancho responded, “because it’s only been a month2 that we’ve been seeking adventures, and so far we haven’t come across anything that even resembles one. Maybe you go looking for one thing and find another. The truth is that if my master, Don Quixote, is healed of his wounds, or his fall, and I’m not crippled by mine, I wouldn’t trade my hopes for the best title in Spain.”

Don Quixote had been listening very attentively to this entire conversation, and sitting up the best he could in his bed, and grasping the hand of the innkeeper’s wife, he said:

“Believe me, beauteous lady, thou canst call thyself fortunate for having welcomed into this thy castle my person, which I do not praise because, as it is said, self-praise is self-debasement, but my squire wilt tell thee who I am. I say only that I shall keep eternally written in my memory the service that thou hast rendered me, so that I may thank thee for it as long as I shall live; and if it were not the will of heaven that love held me captive and subject to its laws and to the eyes of that thankless beauty whose name I murmur before battle, then those of this fair damsel would surely be the masters of my liberty.”

The innkeeper’s wife, and her daughter, and the good Maritornes were perplexed when they heard the words of the wandering knight, for they understood no more of them than if he had been speaking Greek, although they did realize that all were intended as compliments and flattery; because they were unaccustomed to such language, they looked at him in astonishment, and he seemed to them a different kind of man from the ones they were used to, and, after thanking him in their own innlike words for his compliments, they left him, and Maritornes the Asturian tended to Sancho, who had no less need of healing than his master.

The muledriver had arranged with Maritornes that they would take their pleasure that night, and she had given her word that when all the guests were quiet and her master and mistress asleep, she would come to him and satisfy his desire in any way he asked. It was said of this good servant that she never gave her word without keeping it, even if she gave it on a mountain with no witnesses, for she prided herself on being very wellborn and did not consider it an affront to be a servant in the inn because, she said, misfortunes and bad luck had brought her to that state.

The hard, narrow, cramped, and precarious bed of Don Quixote was the first in line in that starlit stall, and then next to it Sancho made his, which consisted only of a rush mat and a blanket that was more coarse burlap than wool. Past these two beds was that of the muledriver, made, as we have said, of the packsaddles and all the trappings of the two best mules in his train, although there were twelve of them, shiny, fat, and famous, because he was one of the wealthy muledrivers of Arévalo, according to the author of this history, who makes particular mention of this muledriver because he knew him very well; there are even some who say he was a distant relation.3 In any case, Cide Hamete Benengeli was a very careful historian, and very accurate in all things, as can be clearly seen in the details he relates to