d lady are waiting for us."

CHAPTER XLIV.

HOW SANCHO PANZA WAS CONDUCTED TO HIS GOVERNMENT, AND OF THE STRANGE
ADVENTURE THAT BEFELL DON QUIXOTE IN THE CASTLE

It is stated, they say, in the true original of this history, that when
Cide Hamete came to write this chapter, his interpreter did not translate
it as he wrote it--that is, as a kind of complaint the Moor made against
himself for having taken in hand a story so dry and of so little variety
as this of Don Quixote, for he found himself forced to speak perpetually
of him and Sancho, without venturing to indulge in digressions and
episodes more serious and more interesting. He said, too, that to go on,
mind, hand, pen always restricted to writing upon one single subject, and
speaking through the mouths of a few characters, was intolerable
drudgery, the result of which was never equal to the author's labour, and
that to avoid this he had in the First Part availed himself of the device
of novels, like "The Ill-advised Curiosity," and "The Captive Captain,"
which stand, as it were, apart from the story; the others are given there
being incidents which occurred to Don Quixote himself and could not be
omitted. He also thought, he says, that many, engrossed by the interest
attaching to the exploits of Don Quixote, would take none in the novels,
and pass them over hastily or impatiently without noticing the elegance
and art of their composition, which would be very manifest were they
published by themselves and not as mere adjuncts to the crazes of Don
Quixote or the simplicities of Sancho. Therefore in this Second Part he
thought it best not to insert novels, either separate or interwoven, but
only episodes, something like them, arising out of the circumstances the
facts present; and even these sparingly, and with no more words than
suffice to make them plain; and as he confines and restricts himself to
the narrow limits of the narrative, though he has ability; capacity, and
brains enough to deal with the whole universe, he requests that his
labours may not be despised, and that credit be given him, not alone for
what he writes, but for what he has refrained from writing.

And so he goes on with his story, saying that the day Don Quixote gave
the counsels to Sancho, the same afternoon after dinner he handed them to
him in writing so that he might get some one to read them to him. They
had scarcely, however, been given to him when he let them drop, and they
fe