ill-bred, and spiteful as you are, you cannot help
showing the grudge you have against the squires of knights-errant."

The impudent servitors, and even the seneschal who came with them, took
the duchess to be speaking in earnest, so they removed the
straining-cloth from Sancho's neck, and with something like shame and
confusion of face went off all of them and left him; whereupon he, seeing
himself safe out of that extreme danger, as it seemed to him, ran and
fell on his knees before the duchess, saying, "From great ladies great
favours may be looked for; this which your grace has done me today cannot
be requited with less than wishing I was dubbed a knight-errant, to
devote myself all the days of my life to the service of so exalted a
lady. I am a labouring man, my name is Sancho Panza, I am married, I have
children, and I am serving as a squire; if in any one of these ways I can
serve your highness, I will not be longer in obeying than your grace in
commanding."

"It is easy to see, Sancho," replied the duchess, "that you have learned
to be polite in the school of politeness itself; I mean to say it is easy
to see that you have been nursed in the bosom of Senor Don Quixote, who
is, of course, the cream of good breeding and flower of ceremony--or
cirimony, as you would say yourself. Fair be the fortunes of such a
master and such a servant, the one the cynosure of knight-errantry, the
other the star of squirely fidelity! Rise, Sancho, my friend; I will
repay your courtesy by taking care that my lord the duke makes good to
you the promised gift of the government as soon as possible."

With this, the conversation came to an end, and Don Quixote retired to
take his midday sleep; but the duchess begged Sancho, unless he had a
very great desire to go to sleep, to come and spend the afternoon with
her and her damsels in a very cool chamber. Sancho replied that, though
he certainly had the habit of sleeping four or five hours in the heat of
the day in summer, to serve her excellence he would try with all his
might not to sleep even one that day, and that he would come in obedience
to her command, and with that he went off. The duke gave fresh orders
with respect to treating Don Quixote as a knight-errant, without
departing even in smallest particular from the style in which, as the
stories tell us, they used to treat the knights of old.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

OF THE DELECTABLE DISCOURSE WHICH THE DUCHESS AND HER DAMSELS