y, being more
inclined for sleep than for listening to songs; so said he to his master,
"Your worship will do well to settle at once where you mean to pass the
night, for the labour these good men are at all day does not allow them
to spend the night in singing."
"I understand thee, Sancho," replied Don Quixote; "I perceive clearly
that those visits to the wine-skin demand compensation in sleep rather
than in music."
"It's sweet to us all, blessed be God," said Sancho.
"I do not deny it," replied Don Quixote; "but settle thyself where thou
wilt; those of my calling are more becomingly employed in watching than
in sleeping; still it would be as well if thou wert to dress this ear for
me again, for it is giving me more pain than it need."
Sancho did as he bade him, but one of the goatherds, seeing the wound,
told him not to be uneasy, as he would apply a remedy with which it would
be soon healed; and gathering some leaves of rosemary, of which there was
a great quantity there, he chewed them and mixed them with a little salt,
and applying them to the ear he secured them firmly with a bandage,
assuring him that no other treatment would be required, and so it proved.
CHAPTER XII.
OF WHAT A GOATHERD RELATED TO THOSE WITH DON QUIXOTE
Just then another young man, one of those who fetched their provisions
from the village, came up and said, "Do you know what is going on in the
village, comrades?"
"How could we know it?" replied one of them.
"Well, then, you must know," continued the young man, "this morning that
famous student-shepherd called Chrysostom died, and it is rumoured that
he died of love for that devil of a village girl the daughter of
Guillermo the Rich, she that wanders about the wolds here in the dress of
a shepherdess."
"You mean Marcela?" said one.
"Her I mean," answered the goatherd; "and the best of it is, he has
directed in his will that he is to be buried in the fields like a Moor,
and at the foot of the rock where the Cork-tree spring is, because, as
the story goes (and they say he himself said so), that was the place
where he first saw her. And he has also left other directions which the
clergy of the village say should not and must not be obeyed because they
savour of paganism. To all which his great friend Ambrosio the student,
he who, like him, also went dressed as a shepherd, replies that
everything must be done without any omission according to the directions
left by C
|