"Let your worship ask what you will," answered Sancho, "for I shall find
a way out of all as as I found a way in; but I implore you, senor, not
not to be so revengeful in future."
"Why dost thou say that, Sancho?" said Don Quixote.
"I say it," he returned, "because those blows just now were more because
of the quarrel the devil stirred up between us both the other night, than
for what I said against my lady Dulcinea, whom I love and reverence as I
would a relic--though there is nothing of that about her--merely as
something belonging to your worship."
"Say no more on that subject for thy life, Sancho," said Don Quixote,
"for it is displeasing to me; I have already pardoned thee for that, and
thou knowest the common saying, 'for a fresh sin a fresh penance.'"
While this was going on they saw coming along the road they were
following a man mounted on an ass, who when he came close seemed to be a
gipsy; but Sancho Panza, whose eyes and heart were there wherever he saw
asses, no sooner beheld the man than he knew him to be Gines de
Pasamonte; and by the thread of the gipsy he got at the ball, his ass,
for it was, in fact, Dapple that carried Pasamonte, who to escape
recognition and to sell the ass had disguised himself as a gipsy, being
able to speak the gipsy language, and many more, as well as if they were
his own. Sancho saw him and recognised him, and the instant he did so he
shouted to him, "Ginesillo, you thief, give up my treasure, release my
life, embarrass thyself not with my repose, quit my ass, leave my
delight, be off, rip, get thee gone, thief, and give up what is not
thine."
There was no necessity for so many words or objurgations, for at the
first one Gines jumped down, and at a like racing speed made off and got
clear of them all. Sancho hastened to his Dapple, and embracing him he
said, "How hast thou fared, my blessing, Dapple of my eyes, my comrade?"
all the while kissing him and caressing him as if he were a human being.
The ass held his peace, and let himself be kissed and caressed by Sancho
without answering a single word. They all came up and congratulated him
on having found Dapple, Don Quixote especially, who told him that
notwithstanding this he would not cancel the order for the three
ass-colts, for which Sancho thanked him.
While the two had been going along conversing in this fashion, the curate
observed to Dorothea that she had shown great cleverness, as well in the
story itself as in its conciseness, and the resemblance it bore to those
of the books of chivalry. She said that she had many times amused herself
reading them; but that she did not know the situation of the provinces or
seaports, and so she had said at haphazard that she had landed at Osuna.