"The fact is," continued Sancho, "that, as your worship knows better than

I do, we are all of us liable to death, and to-day we are, and to-morrow

we are not, and the lamb goes as soon as the sheep, and nobody can

promise himself more hours of life in this world than God may be pleased

to give him; for death is deaf, and when it comes to knock at our life's

door, it is always urgent, and neither prayers, nor struggles, nor

sceptres, nor mitres, can keep it back, as common talk and report say,

and as they tell us from the pulpits every day."

"All that is very true," said Don Quixote; "but I cannot make out what

thou art driving at."

"What I am driving at," said Sancho, "is that your worship settle some

fixed wages for me, to be paid monthly while I am in your service, and

that the same he paid me out of your estate; for I don't care to stand on

rewards which either come late, or ill, or never at all; God help me with

my own. In short, I would like to know what I am to get, be it much or

little; for the hen will lay on one egg, and many littles make a much,

and so long as one gains something there is nothing lost. To be sure, if

it should happen (what I neither believe nor expect) that your worship

were to give me that island you have promised me, I am not so ungrateful

nor so grasping but that I would be willing to have the revenue of such

island valued and stopped out of my wages in due promotion."

"Sancho, my friend," replied Don Quixote, "sometimes proportion may be as

good as promotion."

"I see," said Sancho; "I'll bet I ought to have said proportion, and not

promotion; but it is no matter, as your worship has understood me."

"And so well understood," returned Don Quixote, "that I have seen into

the depths of thy thoughts, and know the mark thou art shooting at with

the countless shafts of thy proverbs. Look here, Sancho, I would readily

fix thy wages if I had ever found any instance in the histories of the

knights-errant to show or indicate, by the slightest hint, what their

squires used to get monthly or yearly; but I have read all or the best

part of their histories, and I cannot remember reading of any

knight-errant having assigned fixed wages to his squire; I only know that

they all served on reward, and that when they least expected it, if good

luck attended their masters, they found themselves recompensed with an

island or something equivalent to it, or at the least they were left with

a title and lordship. If with these hopes and additional inducements you,

Sancho, please to return to my service, well and good; but to suppose

that I am going to disturb or unhinge the ancient usage of

knight-errantry, is all nonsense. And so, my Sancho, get you back to your

house and explain my intentions to your Teresa, and if she likes and you

like to be on reward with me, bene quidem; if not, we remain friends; for

if the pigeon-house does not lack food, it will not lack pigeons; and

bear in mind, my son, that a good hope is better than a bad holding, and

a good grievance better than a bad compensation. I speak in this way,

Sancho, to show you that I can shower down proverbs just as well as

yourself; and in short, I mean to say, and I do say, that if you don't

like to come on reward with me, and run the same chance that I run, God

be with you and make a saint of you; for I shall find plenty of squires

more obedient and painstaking, and not so thickheaded or talkative as you

are."




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