s and found ourselves in the state you now see."

Here the Distressed One and the other duennas raised the veils with which
they were covered, and disclosed countenances all bristling with beards,
some red, some black, some white, and some grizzled, at which spectacle
the duke and duchess made a show of being filled with wonder. Don Quixote
and Sancho were overwhelmed with amazement, and the bystanders lost in
astonishment, while the Trifaldi went on to say: "Thus did that
malevolent villain Malambruno punish us, covering the tenderness and
softness of our faces with these rough bristles! Would to heaven that he
had swept off our heads with his enormous scimitar instead of obscuring
the light of our countenances with these wool-combings that cover us! For
if we look into the matter, sirs (and what I am now going to say I would
say with eyes flowing like fountains, only that the thought of our
misfortune and the oceans they have already wept, keep them as dry as
barley spears, and so I say it without tears), where, I ask, can a duenna
with a beard to to? What father or mother will feel pity for her? Who
will help her? For, if even when she has a smooth skin, and a face
tortured by a thousand kinds of washes and cosmetics, she can hardly get
anybody to love her, what will she do when she shows a countenace turned
into a thicket? Oh duennas, companions mine! it was an unlucky moment
when we were born and an ill-starred hour when our fathers begot us!" And
as she said this she showed signs of being about to faint.

CHAPTER XL.

OF MATTERS RELATING AND BELONGING TO THIS ADVENTURE AND TO THIS MEMORABLE
HISTORY

Verily and truly all those who find pleasure in histories like this ought
show their gratitude to Cide Hamete, its original author, for the
scrupulous care he has taken to set before us all its minute particulars,
not leaving anything, however trifling it may be, that he does not make
clear and plain. He portrays the thoughts, he reveals the fancies, he
answers implied questions, clears up doubts, sets objections at rest,
and, in a word, makes plain the smallest points the most inquisitive can
desire to know. O renowned author! O happy Don Quixote! O famous famous
droll Sancho! All and each, may ye live countless ages for the delight
and amusement of the dwellers on earth!

The history goes on to say that when Sancho saw the Distressed One faint
he exclaimed: "I swear by the faith of an honest man and the s