DON QUIXOTE

Volume II.

Part 31.

by Miguel de Cervantes


Translated by John Ormsby



CHAPTER XLIV.

HOW SANCHO PANZA WAS CONDUCTED TO HIS GOVERNMENT, AND OF THE STRANGE
ADVENTURE THAT BEFELL DON QUIXOTE IN THE CASTLE


It is stated, they say, in the true original of this history, that when
Cide Hamete came to write this chapter, his interpreter did not translate
it as he wrote it--that is, as a kind of complaint the Moor made against
himself for having taken in hand a story so dry and of so little variety
as this of Don Quixote, for he found himself forced to speak perpetually
of him and Sancho, without venturing to indulge in digressions and
episodes more serious and more interesting. He said, too, that to go on,
mind, hand, pen always restricted to writing upon one single subject, and
speaking through the mouths of a few characters, was intolerable
drudgery, the result of which was never equal to the author's labour, and
that to avoid this he had in the First Part availed himself of the device