ssary consequence, towards those who represent and produce it--I
would that thou wert favourably disposed, for they are all instruments of
great good to the State, placing before us at every step a mirror in
which we may see vividly displayed what goes on in human life; nor is
there any similitude that shows us more faithfully what we are and ought
to be than the play and the players. Come, tell me, hast thou not seen a
play acted in which kings, emperors, pontiffs, knights, ladies, and
divers other personages were introduced? One plays the villain, another
the knave, this one the merchant, that the soldier, one the sharp-witted
fool, another the foolish lover; and when the play is over, and they have
put off the dresses they wore in it, all the actors become equal."

"Yes, I have seen that," said Sancho.

"Well then," said Don Quixote, "the same thing happens in the comedy and
life of this world, where some play emperors, others popes, and, in
short, all the characters that can be brought into a play; but when it is
over, that is to say when life ends, death strips them all of the
garments that distinguish one from the other, and all are equal in the
grave."

"A fine comparison!" said Sancho; "though not so new but that I have
heard it many and many a time, as well as that other one of the game of
chess; how, so long as the game lasts, each piece has its own particular
office, and when the game is finished they are all mixed, jumbled up and
shaken together, and stowed away in the bag, which is much like ending
life in the grave."

"Thou art growing less doltish and more shrewd every day, Sancho," said
Don Quixote.

"Ay," said Sancho; "it must be that some of your worship's shrewdness
sticks to me; land that, of itself, is barren and dry, will come to yield
good fruit if you dung it and till it; what I mean is that your worship's
conversation has been the dung that has fallen on the barren soil of my
dry wit, and the time I have been in your service and society has been
the tillage; and with the help of this I hope to yield fruit in abundance
that will not fall away or slide from those paths of good breeding that
your worship has made in my parched understanding."

Don Quixote laughed at Sancho's affected phraseology, and perceived that
what he said about his improvement was true, for now and then he spoke in
a way that surprised him; though always, or mostly, when Sancho tried to
talk fine and attempted polite la