mine, the ills of others hang by a hair; every day I am discovering more
and more how little I have to hope for from keeping company with your
worship; for if this time you have allowed me to be drubbed, the next
time, or a hundred times more, we'll have the blanketings of the other
day over again, and all the other pranks which, if they have fallen on my
shoulders now, will be thrown in my teeth by-and-by. I would do a great
deal better (if I was not an ignorant brute that will never do any good
all my life), I would do a great deal better, I say, to go home to my
wife and children and support them and bring them up on what God may
please to give me, instead of following your worship along roads that
lead nowhere and paths that are none at all, with little to drink and
less to eat. And then when it comes to sleeping! Measure out seven feet
on the earth, brother squire, and if that's not enough for you, take as
many more, for you may have it all your own way and stretch yourself to
your heart's content. Oh that I could see burnt and turned to ashes the
first man that meddled with knight-errantry or at any rate the first who
chose to be squire to such fools as all the knights-errant of past times
must have been! Of those of the present day I say nothing, because, as
your worship is one of them, I respect them, and because I know your
worship knows a point more than the devil in all you say and think."

"I would lay a good wager with you, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "that now
that you are talking on without anyone to stop you, you don't feel a pain
in your whole body. Talk away, my son, say whatever comes into your head
or mouth, for so long as you feel no pain, the irritation your
impertinences give me will be a pleasure to me; and if you are so anxious
to go home to your wife and children, God forbid that I should prevent
you; you have money of mine; see how long it is since we left our village
this third time, and how much you can and ought to earn every month, and
pay yourself out of your own hand."