fields, where he could with perfect freedom give range to his thoughts of love while he followed the virtuous pastoral calling; and he besought them, if they had not a great deal to do and were not prevented by more important business, to consent to be his companions, for he would buy sheep enough to qualify them for shepherds; and the most important point of the whole affair, he could tell them, was settled, for he had given them names that would fit them to a T. The curate asked what they were. Don Quixote replied that he himself was to be called the shepherd Quixotize and the bachelor the shepherd Carrascón, and the curate the shepherd Curambro, and Sancho Panza the shepherd Pancino.
Both were astounded at Don Quixote’s new craze; however, lest he should once more make off out of the village from them in pursuit of his chivalry, they trusting that in the course of the year he might be cured, fell in with his new project, applauded his crazy idea as a bright one, and offered to share the life with him. “And what’s more,” said Samson Carrasco, “I am, as all the world knows, a very famous poet, and I’ll be always making verses, pastoral, or courtly, or as it may come into my head, to pass away our time in those secluded regions where we shall be roaming. But what is most needful, sirs, is that each of us should choose the name of the shepherdess he means to glorify in his verses, and that we should not leave a tree, be it ever so hard, without writing up and carving her name on it, as is the habit and custom of love-smitten shepherds.”
“That’s the very thing,” said Don Quixote; “though I am relieved from looking for the name of an imaginary shepherdess, for there’s the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso, the glory of these brooksides, the ornament of these meadows, the mainstay of beauty, the cream of all the graces, and, in a word, the being to whom all praise is appropriate, be it ever so hyperbolical.”
“Very true,” said the curate; “but we the others must look about for accommodating shepherdesses that will answer our purpose one way or another.”