List XVI

Sancho fell asleep at the foot of a cork tree.

Sancho listened to all of this with a very sorrowful spirit, for he saw that his hopes for a noble title were disappearing and going up in smoke, and that the lovely Princess Micomicona had turned into Dorotea, and the giant into Don Fernando, and that his master was in a deep, sound sleep, unaware of everything that had happened.

Sancho looked everywhere on the floor for the giant's head, and when he did not find it, he said: "Now I know that everything in this house is enchantment."

Don Quixote was dumbfounded, Sancho astounded, the cousin baffled, the page stunned, the man who told about the braying stupefied, the innkeeper perplexed, and, in short, all who heard the words of the puppet master were amazed.

Sancho Panza hung on his words but said none of his own, and from time to time he turned his head to see if he could see the knights and giants his master was naming.

"By God," said Sancho, "I wouldn't pay anything to have somebody tell me what's already happened to me! Who knows that better than me?"

Sancho returned to his packsaddle, having moved his master to laughter despite his profound melancholy and causing Don Diego even more amazement.

"I can't do that," responded Sancho, "because when I leave your grace I'm filled with fear that plagues me with a thousand different kinds of sudden frights and visions."

Sancho had returned in the middle of this conversation and was left very confused and bewildered when he heard that nowadays there were no more knights errant and that all the books of chivalry were foolish lies, and he resolved in his heart to wait and see the outcome of the journey his master was about to take.

"I pass," said Sancho. "I'm going over to that brook with this meat pie, where I plan to eat enough for three days."

And Sancho said that if this went on much longer, Don Quixote ran the risk of not becoming an emperor, as he was obliged to do, or even an archbishop, which was the least he could do.

"Hail once again, O Sancho! So good a cat, / that only you, when the Ovid of our Spain / bows to kiss your hand, smack him on the head."