rrant that have ever
been in the world have left or may leave behind them?"

"That I grant, too," said Don Quixote.

"Then this fame, these favours, these privileges, or whatever you call
it," said Sancho, "belong to the bodies and relics of the saints who,
with the approbation and permission of our holy mother Church, have
lamps, tapers, winding-sheets, crutches, pictures, eyes and legs, by
means of which they increase devotion and add to their own Christian
reputation. Kings carry the bodies or relics of saints on their
shoulders, and kiss bits of their bones, and enrich and adorn their
oratories and favourite altars with them."

"What wouldst thou have me infer from all thou hast said, Sancho?" asked
Don Quixote.

"My meaning is," said Sancho, "let us set about becoming saints, and we
shall obtain more quickly the fair fame we are striving after; for you
know, senor, yesterday or the day before yesterday (for it is so lately
one may say so) they canonised and beatified two little barefoot friars,
and it is now reckoned the greatest good luck to kiss or touch the iron
chains with which they girt and tortured their bodies, and they are held
in greater veneration, so it is said, than the sword of Roland in the
armoury of our lord the King, whom God preserve. So that, senor, it is
better to be an humble little friar of no matter what order, than a
valiant knight-errant; with God a couple of dozen of penance lashings are
of more avail than two thousand lance-thrusts, be they given to giants,
or monsters, or dragons."

"All that is true," returned Don Quixote, "but we cannot all be friars,
and many are the ways by which God takes his own to heaven; chivalry is a
religion, there are sainted knights in glory."

"Yes," said Sancho, "but I have heard say that there are more friars in
heaven than knights-errant."

"That," said Don Quixote, "is because those in religious orders are more
numerous than knights."

"The errants are many," said Sancho.

"Many," replied Don Quixote, "but few they who deserve the name of
knights."

With these, and other discussions of the same sort, they passed that
night and the following day, without anything worth mention happening to
them, whereat Don Quixote was not a little dejected; but at length the
next day, at daybreak, they descried the great city of El Toboso, at the
sight of which Don Quixote's spirits rose and Sancho's fell, for he did
not know Dulcinea's house, nor in all hi