ote, "do you perchance
come to transact any go-between business? Because I must tell you I am
not available for anybody's purpose, thanks to the peerless beauty of my
lady Dulcinea del Toboso. In short, Senora Dona Rodriguez, if you will
leave out and put aside all love messages, you may go and light your
candle and come back, and we will discuss all the commands you have for
me and whatever you wish, saving only, as I said, all seductive
communications."

"I carry nobody's messages, senor," said the duenna; "little you know me.
Nay, I'm not far enough advanced in years to take to any such childish
tricks. God be praised I have a soul in my body still, and all my teeth
and grinders in my mouth, except one or two that the colds, so common in
this Aragon country, have robbed me of. But wait a little, while I go and
light my candle, and I will return immediately and lay my sorrows before
you as before one who relieves those of all the world;" and without
staying for an answer she quitted the room and left Don Quixote
tranquilly meditating while he waited for her. A thousand thoughts at
once suggested themselves to him on the subject of this new adventure,
and it struck him as being ill done and worse advised in him to expose
himself to the danger of breaking his plighted faith to his lady; and
said he to himself, "Who knows but that the devil, being wily and
cunning, may be trying now to entrap me with a duenna, having failed with
empresses, queens, duchesses, marchionesses, and countesses? Many a time
have I heard it said by many a man of sense that he will sooner offer you
a flat-nosed wench than a roman-nosed one; and who knows but this
privacy, this opportunity, this silence, may awaken my sleeping desires,
and lead me in these my latter years to fall where I have never tripped?
In cases of this sort it is better to flee than to await the battle. But
I must be out of my senses to think and utter such nonsense; for it is
impossible that a long, white-hooded spectacled duenna could stir up or
excite a wanton thought in the most graceless bosom in the world. Is
there a duenna on earth that has fair flesh? Is there a duenna in the
world that escapes being ill-tempered, wrinkled, and prudish? Avaunt,
then, ye duenna crew, undelightful to all mankind. Oh, but that lady did
well who, they say, had at the end of her reception room a couple of
figures of duennas with spectacles and lace-cushions, as if at work, and
those statue