e hold with thee? What did she ask about
me, and what answer didst thou give? Make haste; tell me all, and let not
an atom be left behind in the ink-bottle."

"She asked me nothing," said Sancho; "but I told her how your worship was
left doing penance in her service, naked from the waist up, in among
these mountains like a savage, sleeping on the ground, not eating bread
off a tablecloth nor combing your beard, weeping and cursing your
fortune."

"In saying I cursed my fortune thou saidst wrong," said Don Quixote; "for
rather do I bless it and shall bless it all the days of my life for
having made me worthy of aspiring to love so lofty a lady as Dulcinea del
Toboso."

"And so lofty she is," said Sancho, "that she overtops me by more than a
hand's-breadth."

"What! Sancho," said Don Quixote, "didst thou measure with her?"

"I measured in this way," said Sancho; "going to help her to put a sack
of wheat on the back of an ass, we came so close together that I could
see she stood more than a good palm over me."

"Well!" said Don Quixote, "and doth she not of a truth accompany and
adorn this greatness with a thousand million charms of mind! But one
thing thou wilt not deny, Sancho; when thou camest close to her didst
thou not perceive a Sabaean odour, an aromatic fragrance, a, I know not
what, delicious, that I cannot find a name for; I mean a redolence, an
exhalation, as if thou wert in the shop of some dainty glover?"

"All I can say is," said Sancho, "that I did perceive a little odour,
something goaty; it must have been that she was all in a sweat with hard
work."

"It could not be that," said Don Quixote, "but thou must have been
suffering from cold in the head, or must have smelt thyself; for I know
well what would be the scent of that rose among thorns, that lily of the
field, that dissolved amber."

"Maybe so," replied Sancho; "there often comes from myself that same
odour which then seemed to me to come from her grace the lady Dulcinea;
but that's no wonder, for one devil is like another."

"Well then," continued Don Quixote, "now she has done sifting the corn
and sent it to the mill; what did she do when she read the letter?"

"As for the letter," said Sancho, "she did not read it, for she said she
could neither read nor write; instead of that she tore it up into small
pieces, saying that she did not want to let anyone read it lest her
secrets should become known in the village, and that what I had tol