uld to God it were to-day
instead of to-morrow, even though they were to say when they saw me
seated in the coach with my mother, 'See that rubbish, that
garlic-stuffed fellow's daughter, how she goes stretched at her ease in a
coach as if she was a she-pope!' But let them tramp through the mud, and
let me go in my coach with my feet off the ground. Bad luck to backbiters
all over the world; 'let me go warm and the people may laugh.' Do I say
right, mother?"

"To be sure you do, my child," said Teresa; "and all this good luck, and
even more, my good Sancho foretold me; and thou wilt see, my daughter, he
won't stop till he has made me a countess; for to make a beginning is
everything in luck; and as I have heard thy good father say many a time
(for besides being thy father he's the father of proverbs too), 'When
they offer thee a heifer, run with a halter; when they offer thee a
government, take it; when they would give thee a county, seize it; when
they say, "Here, here!" to thee with something good, swallow it.' Oh no!
go to sleep, and don't answer the strokes of good fortune and the lucky
chances that are knocking at the door of your house!"

"And what do I care," added Sanchica, "whether anybody says when he sees
me holding my head up, 'The dog saw himself in hempen breeches,' and the
rest of it?"

Hearing this the curate said, "I do believe that all this family of the
Panzas are born with a sackful of proverbs in their insides, every one of
them; I never saw one of them that does not pour them out at all times
and on all occasions."

"That is true," said the page, "for Senor Governor Sancho utters them at
every turn; and though a great many of them are not to the purpose, still
they amuse one, and my lady the duchess and the duke praise them highly."

"Then you still maintain that all this about Sancho's government is true,
senor," said the bachelor, "and that there actually is a duchess who
sends him presents and writes to him? Because we, although we have
handled the present and read the letters, don't believe it and suspect it
to be something in the line of our fellow-townsman Don Quixote, who
fancies that everything is done by enchantment; and for this reason I am
almost ready to say that I'd like to touch and feel your worship to see
whether you are a mere ambassador of the imagination or a man of flesh
and blood."

"All I know, sirs," replied the page, "is that I am a real ambassador,
and that Senor San