Who, hearing the foregoing discourse of Don Quixote, would not have set
him down for a person of great good sense and greater rectitude of
purpose? But, as has been frequently observed in the course of this great
history, he only talked nonsense when he touched on chivalry, and in
discussing all other subjects showed that he had a clear and unbiassed
understanding; so that at every turn his acts gave the lie to his
intellect, and his intellect to his acts; but in the case of these second
counsels that he gave Sancho he showed himself to have a lively turn of
humour, and displayed conspicuously his wisdom, and also his folly.

Sancho listened to him with the deepest attention, and endeavoured to fix
his counsels in his memory, like one who meant to follow them and by
their means bring the full promise of his government to a happy issue.
Don Quixote, then, went on to say:

"With regard to the mode in which thou shouldst govern thy person and thy
house, Sancho, the first charge I have to give thee is to be clean, and
to cut thy nails, not letting them grow as some do, whose ignorance makes
them fancy that long nails are an ornament to their hands, as if those
excrescences they neglect to cut were nails, and not the talons of a
lizard-catching kestrel--a filthy and unnatural abuse.

"Go not ungirt and loose, Sancho; for disordered attire is a sign of an
unstable mind, unless indeed the slovenliness and slackness is to be set
down to craft, as was the common opinion in the case of Julius Caesar.

"Ascertain cautiously what thy office may be worth; and if it will allow
thee to give liveries to thy servants, give them respectable and
serviceable, rather than showy and gay ones, and divide them between thy
servants and the poor; that is to say, if thou canst clothe six pages,