myself?"

"What! are the alforjas missing, Sancho?" said Don Quixote.

"Yes, they are missing," answered Sancho.

"In that case we have nothing to eat to-day," replied Don Quixote.

"It would be so," answered Sancho, "if there were none of the herbs your
worship says you know in these meadows, those with which knights-errant
as unlucky as your worship are wont to supply such-like shortcomings."

"For all that," answered Don Quixote, "I would rather have just now a
quarter of bread, or a loaf and a couple of pilchards' heads, than all
the herbs described by Dioscorides, even with Doctor Laguna's notes.
Nevertheless, Sancho the Good, mount thy beast and come along with me,
for God, who provides for all things, will not fail us (more especially
when we are so active in his service as we are), since he fails not the
midges of the air, nor the grubs of the earth, nor the tadpoles of the
water, and is so merciful that he maketh his sun to rise on the good and
on the evil, and sendeth rain on the unjust and on the just."

"Your worship would make a better preacher than knight-errant," said
Sancho.

"Knights-errant knew and ought to know everything, Sancho," said Don
Quixote; "for there were knights-errant in former times as well qualified
to deliver a sermon or discourse in the middle of an encampment, as if
they had graduated in the University of Paris; whereby we may see that
the lance has never blunted the pen, nor the pen the lance."