he being--as no doubt he was--a Moor, only meant that, just as a Catholic
Christian taking an oath swears, or ought to swear, what is true, and
tell the truth in what he avers, so he was telling the truth, as much as
if he swore as a Catholic Christian, in all he chose to write about
Quixote, especially in declaring who Master Pedro was and what was the
divining ape that astonished all the villages with his divinations. He
says, then, that he who has read the First Part of this history will
remember well enough the Gines de Pasamonte whom, with other galley
slaves, Don Quixote set free in the Sierra Morena: a kindness for which
he afterwards got poor thanks and worse payment from that evil-minded,
ill-conditioned set. This Gines de Pasamonte--Don Ginesillo de Parapilla,
Don Quixote called him--it was that stole Dapple from Sancho Panza;
which, because by the fault of the printers neither the how nor the when
was stated in the First Part, has been a puzzle to a good many people,
who attribute to the bad memory of the author what was the error of the
press. In fact, however, Gines stole him while Sancho Panza was asleep on
his back, adopting the plan and device that Brunello had recourse to when
he stole Sacripante's horse from between his legs at the siege of
Albracca; and, as has been told, Sancho afterwards recovered him. This
Gines, then, afraid of being caught by the officers of justice, who were
looking for him to punish him for his numberless rascalities and offences
(which were so many and so great that he himself wrote a big book giving
an account of them), resolved to shift his quarters into the kingdom of
Aragon, and cover up his left eye, and take up the trade of a
puppet-showman; for this, as well as juggling, he knew how to practise to
perfection. From some released Christians returning from Barbary, it so
happened, he bought the ape, which he taught to mount upon his shoulder
on his making a certain sign, and to whisper, or seem to do so, in his
ear. Thus prepared, before entering any village whither he was bound with
his show and his ape, he used to inform himself at the nearest village,