Sancho muttered this somewhat aloud, and his master overheard him, and asked, “What art thou muttering there, Sancho?”
“I’m not saying anything or muttering anything,” said Sancho; “I was only saying to myself that I wish I had heard what your worship has said just now before I married; perhaps I’d say now, ‘The ox that’s loose licks himself well.’ ”
“Is thy Teresa so bad then, Sancho?”
“She is not very bad,” replied Sancho; “but she is not very good; at least she is not as good as I could wish.”
“Thou dost wrong, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “to speak ill of thy wife; for after all she is the mother of thy children.”
“We are quits,” returned Sancho; “for she speaks ill of me whenever she takes it into her head, especially when she is jealous; and Satan himself could not put up with her then.”
In fine, they remained three days with the newly married couple, by whom they were entertained and treated like kings. Don Quixote begged the fencing licentiate to find him a guide to show him the way to the cave of Montesinos, as he had a great desire to enter it and see with his own eyes if the wonderful tales that were told of it all over the country were true. The licentiate said he would get him a cousin of his own, a famous scholar, and one very much given to reading books of chivalry, who would have great pleasure in conducting him to the mouth of the very cave, and would show him the lakes of Ruidera, which were likewise famous all over La Mancha, and even all over Spain; and he assured him he would find him entertaining, for he was a youth who could write books good enough to be printed and dedicated to princes. The cousin arrived at last, leading an ass in foal, with a packsaddle covered with a parti-coloured carpet or sackcloth; Sancho saddled Rocinante, got