me lose my footing and fall and knock my grinders out? Sancho
I was born and Sancho I mean to die. But for all that, if heaven were to
make me a fair offer of an island or something else of the kind, without
much trouble and without much risk, I am not such a fool as to refuse it;
for they say, too, 'when they offer thee a heifer, run with a halter; and
'when good luck comes to thee, take it in.'"

"Brother Sancho," said Carrasco, "you have spoken like a professor; but,
for all that, put your trust in God and in Senor Don Quixote, for he will
give you a kingdom, not to say an island."

"It is all the same, be it more or be it less," replied Sancho; "though I
can tell Senor Carrasco that my master would not throw the kingdom he
might give me into a sack all in holes; for I have felt my own pulse and
I find myself sound enough to rule kingdoms and govern islands; and I
have before now told my master as much."

"Take care, Sancho," said Samson; "honours change manners, and perhaps
when you find yourself a governor you won't know the mother that bore
you."

"That may hold good of those that are born in the ditches," said Sancho,
"not of those who have the fat of an old Christian four fingers deep on
their souls, as I have. Nay, only look at my disposition, is that likely
to show ingratitude to anyone?"

"God grant it," said Don Quixote; "we shall see when the government
comes; and I seem to see it already."

He then begged the bachelor, if he were a poet, to do him the favour of
composing some verses for him conveying the farewell he meant to take of
his lady Dulcinea del Toboso, and to see that a letter of her name was
placed at the beginning of each line, so that, at the end of the verses,
"Dulcinea del Toboso" might be read by putting together the first
letters. The bachelor replied that although he was not one of the famous
poets of Spain, who were, they said, only three and a half, he would not
fail to compose the required verses; though he saw a great difficulty in
the task, as the letters which made up the name were seventeen; so, if he
made four ballad stanzas of four lines each, there would be a letter
over, and if he made them of five, what they called decimas or
redondillas, there were three letters short; nevertheless he would try to
drop a letter as well as he could, so that the name "Dulcinea del Toboso"
might be got into four ballad stanzas.

"It must be, by some means or other," said Don Quixote, "fo