“God knows I should like to take it,” returned Sancho, “or at least to change it for my own, which does not seem to me as good a one: verily the laws of chivalry are strict, since they cannot be stretched to let one ass be changed for another; I should like to know if I might at least change trappings.”
“On that head I am not quite certain,” answered Don Quixote, “and the matter being doubtful, pending better information, I say thou mayest change them, if so be thou hast urgent need of them.”
“So urgent is it,” answered Sancho, “that if they were for my own person I could not want them more;” and forthwith, fortified by this licence, he effected the mutatio capparum , rigging out his beast to the ninety-nines and making quite another thing of it. This done, they broke their fast on the remains of the spoils of war plundered from the sumpter mule, and drank of the brook that flowed from the fulling mills, without casting a look in that direction, in such loathing did they hold them for the alarm they had caused them; and, all anger and gloom removed, they mounted and, without taking any fixed road (not to fix upon any being the proper thing for true knights-errant), they set out, guided by Rocinante’s will, which carried along with it that of his master, not to say that of the ass, which always followed him wherever he led, lovingly and sociably; nevertheless they returned to the high road, and pursued it at a venture without any other aim.
As they went along, then, in this way Sancho said to his master, “Señor, would your worship give me leave to speak a little to you? For since you laid that hard injunction of silence on me several things have gone to rot in my stomach, and I have now just one on the tip of my tongue that I don’t want to be spoiled.”
“Say, on, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “and be brief in thy discourse, for there is no pleasure in one that is long.”