ll the duchess's damsels and
duennas gathered round him, waiting in profound silence to hear what
he would say. It was the duchess however who spoke first,
saying,--"Now that we are alone, and that there is nobody here to
overhear us, I should be glad if the senor governor would relieve me
of certain doubts I have, rising out of the history of the great Don
Quixote that is now in print. One is: inasmuch as worthy Sancho never
saw Dulcinea,--I mean the lady Dulcinea del Toboso,--nor took Don
Quixote's letter to her,--for it was left in the memorandum-book in
the Sierra Morena, how did he dare to invent the answer and all that
about finding her sifting wheat,--the whole story being a deception
and falsehood, and so much to the prejudice of the peerless Dulcinea's
good name; a thing that is not at all becoming the character and
fidelity of a good squire?"

At these words, Sancho, without uttering one in reply, got up from his
chair, and with noiseless steps, with his body bent and his finger on
his lips, went all round the room lifting up the hangings; and this
done, he came back to his seat and said:--"Now, senora, that I have
seen that there is no one except the bystanders listening to us on the
sly, I will answer what you have asked me, and all you may ask me,
without fear or dread. And the first thing I have got to say is, that
for my own part I hold my master Don Quixote to be stark mad, though
sometimes he says things that to my mind, and indeed everybody's that
listens to him, are so wise and run in such a straight furrow that
Satan himself could not have said them better; but for all that,
really and beyond all question, it's my firm belief he is cracked.
Well, then, as this is clear to my mind, I can venture to make him
believe things that have neither head nor tail, like that affair of
the answer to the letter, and that other of six or eight days ago
which is not yet in history,--that is to say, the affair of the
enchantment of my lady Dulcinea; for I made him believe she is
enchanted, though there's no more truth in it than over the hills of
Ubeda."

The duchess begged him to tell her about the enchantment or deception,
so Sancho told the whole story exactly as it had happened, and his
hearers were not a little amused by it; and then resuming, the duchess
said:--"In consequence of what worthy Sancho has told me, a doubt
starts up in my mind, and there comes a kind of whisper to my ears
that says, 'If Don Quix