had come up, and Don Quixote asked him, "Can
you tell me, worthy friend, and God speed you, whereabouts here is the
palace of the peerless princess Dona Dulcinea del Toboso?"

"Senor," replied the lad, "I am a stranger, and I have been only a few
days in the town, doing farm work for a rich farmer. In that house
opposite there live the curate of the village and the sacristan, and both
or either of them will be able to give your worship some account of this
lady princess, for they have a list of all the people of El Toboso;
though it is my belief there is not a princess living in the whole of it;
many ladies there are, of quality, and in her own house each of them may
be a princess."

"Well, then, she I am inquiring for will be one of these, my friend,"
said Don Quixote.

"May be so," replied the lad; "God be with you, for here comes the
daylight;" and without waiting for any more of his questions, he whipped
on his mules.

Sancho, seeing his master downcast and somewhat dissatisfied, said to
him, "Senor, daylight will be here before long, and it will not do for us
to let the sun find us in the street; it will be better for us to quit
the city, and for your worship to hide in some forest in the
neighbourhood, and I will come back in the daytime, and I won't leave a
nook or corner of the whole village that I won't search for the house,
castle, or palace, of my lady, and it will be hard luck for me if I don't
find it; and as soon as I have found it I will speak to her grace, and
tell her where and how your worship is waiting for her to arrange some
plan for you to see her without any damage to her honour and reputation."

"Sancho," said Don Quixote, "thou hast delivered a thousand sentences
condensed in the compass of a few words; I thank thee for the advice thou
hast given me, and take it most gladly. Come, my son, let us go look for
some place where I may hide, while thou dost return, as thou sayest, to
seek, and speak with my lady, from whose discretion and courtesy I look
for favours more than miraculous."

Sancho was in a fever to get his master out of the town, lest he should
discover the falsehood of the reply he had brought to him in the Sierra
Morena on behalf of Dulcinea; so he hastened their departure, which they
took at once, and two miles out of the village they found a forest or
thicket wherein Don Quixote ensconced himself, while Sancho returned to
the city to speak to Dulcinea, in which embassy thing