ng by my inclination to
arms, was born under the influence of the planet Mars. I am, therefore,
in a measure constrained to follow that road, and by it I must travel in
spite of all the world, and it will be labour in vain for you to urge me
to resist what heaven wills, fate ordains, reason requires, and, above
all, my own inclination favours; for knowing as I do the countless toils
that are the accompaniments of knight-errantry, I know, too, the infinite
blessings that are attained by it; I know that the path of virtue is very
narrow, and the road of vice broad and spacious; I know their ends and
goals are different, for the broad and easy road of vice ends in death,
and the narrow and toilsome one of virtue in life, and not transitory
life, but in that which has no end; I know, as our great Castilian poet
says, that--

It is by rugged paths like these they go
That scale the heights of immortality,
Unreached by those that falter here below."

"Woe is me!" exclaimed the niece, "my lord is a poet, too! He knows
everything, and he can do everything; I will bet, if he chose to turn
mason, he could make a house as easily as a cage."

"I can tell you, niece," replied Don Quixote, "if these chivalrous
thoughts did not engage all my faculties, there would be nothing that I
could not do, nor any sort of knickknack that would not come from my
hands, particularly cages and tooth-picks."

At this moment there came a knocking at the door, and when they asked who
was there, Sancho Panza made answer that it was he. The instant the
housekeeper knew who it was, she ran to hide herself so as not to see
him; in such abhorrence did she hold him. The niece let him in, and his
master Don Quixote came forward to receive him with open arms, and the
pair shut themselves up in his room, where they had another conversation
not inferior to the previous one.

CHAPTER VII.

OF WHAT PASSED BETWEEN DON QUIXOTE AND HIS SQUIRE, TOGETHER WITH OTHER
VERY NOTABLE INCIDENTS

The instant the housekeeper saw Sancho Panza shut himself in with her
master, she guessed what they were about; and suspecting that the result
of the consultation would be a resolve to undertake a third sally, she
seized her mantle, and in deep anxiety and distress, ran to find the
bachelor Samson Carrasco, as she thought that, being a well-spoken man,
and a new friend of her master's, he might be able to persuade him to
give up any such crazy notion. She found him pac