Sancho listened with the greatest attention to the account of the

gentleman's life and occupation; and thinking it a good and a holy life,

and that he who led it ought to work miracles, he threw himself off

Dapple, and running in haste seized his right stirrup and kissed his foot

again and again with a devout heart and almost with tears.

Seeing this the gentleman asked him, "What are you about, brother? What

are these kisses for?"

"Let me kiss," said Sancho, "for I think your worship is the first saint

in the saddle I ever saw all the days of my life."

"I am no saint," replied the gentleman, "but a great sinner; but you are,

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brother, for you must be a good fellow, as your simplicity shows."

Sancho went back and regained his pack-saddle, having extracted a laugh

from his master's profound melancholy, and excited fresh amazement in Don

Diego. Don Quixote then asked him how many children he had, and observed

that one of the things wherein the ancient philosophers, who were without

the true knowledge of God, placed the summum bonum was in the gifts of

nature, in those of fortune, in having many friends, and many and good

children.

"I, Senor Don Quixote," answered the gentleman, "have one son, without

whom, perhaps, I should count myself happier than I am, not because he is

a bad son, but because he is not so good as I could wish. He is eighteen

years of age; he has been for six at Salamanca studying Latin and Greek,

and when I wished him to turn to the study of other sciences I found him

so wrapped up in that of poetry (if that can be called a science) that

there is no getting him to take kindly to the law, which I wished him to

study, or to theology, the queen of them all. I would like him to be an

honour to his family, as we live in days when our kings liberally reward

learning that is virtuous and worthy; for learning without virtue is a

pearl on a dunghill. He spends the whole day in settling whether Homer

expressed himself correctly or not in such and such a line of the Iliad,

whether Martial was indecent or not in such and such an epigram, whether

such and such lines of Virgil are to be understood in this way or in

that; in short, all his talk is of the works of these poets, and those of

Horace, Perseus, Juvenal, and Tibullus; for of the moderns in our own

language he makes no great account; but with all his seeming indifference

to Spanish poetry, just now his thoughts are absorbed in making a gloss

on four lines that have been sent him from Salamanca, which I suspect are

for some poetical tournament."




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