th-faced
sprig of a page, without fortune or fame, except such reputation for
gratitude as the affection he bore his friend got for him. The great poet
who sang her beauty, the famous Ariosto, not caring to sing her
adventures after her contemptible surrender (which probably were not over
and above creditable), dropped her where he says:

How she received the sceptre of Cathay,
Some bard of defter quill may sing some day;

and this was no doubt a kind of prophecy, for poets are also called
vates, that is to say diviners; and its truth was made plain; for since
then a famous Andalusian poet has lamented and sung her tears, and
another famous and rare poet, a Castilian, has sung her beauty."

"Tell me, Senor Don Quixote," said the barber here, "among all those who
praised her, has there been no poet to write a satire on this Lady
Angelica?"

"I can well believe," replied Don Quixote, "that if Sacripante or Roland
had been poets they would have given the damsel a trimming; for it is
naturally the way with poets who have been scorned and rejected by their
ladies, whether fictitious or not, in short by those whom they select as
the ladies of their thoughts, to avenge themselves in satires and
libels--a vengeance, to be sure, unworthy of generous hearts; but up to
the present I have not heard of any defamatory verse against the Lady
Angelica, who turned the world upside down."

"Strange," said the curate; but at this moment they heard the housekeeper
and the niece, who had previously withdrawn from the conversation,
exclaiming aloud in the courtyard, and at the noise they all ran out.

CHAPTER II.

WHICH TREATS OF THE NOTABLE ALTERCATION WHICH SANCHO PANZA HAD WITH DON
QUIXOTE'S NIECE, AND HOUSEKEEPER, TOGETHER WITH OTHER DROLL MATTERS

The history relates that the outcry Don Quixote, the curate, and the
barber heard came from the niece and the housekeeper exclaiming to
Sancho, who was striving to force his way in to see Don Quixote while
they held the door against him, "What does the vagabond want in this
house? Be off to your own, brother, for it is you, and no one else, that
delude my master, and lead him astray, and take him tramping about the
country."

To which Sancho replied, "Devil's own housekeeper! it is I who am
deluded, and led astray, and taken tramping about the country, and not
thy master! He has carried me all over the world, and you are mightily
mistaken. He enticed me away from home by a t