To which Don Quixote replied, “Señora, my misfortunes, though they had a beginning, will never have an end. I have vanquished giants and I have sent her caitiffs and miscreants; but where are they to find her if she is enchanted and turned into the most ill-favoured peasant wench that can be imagined?”
“I don’t know,” said Sancho Panza; “to me she seems the fairest creature in the world; at any rate, in nimbleness and jumping she won’t give in to a tumbler; by my faith, señora duchess, she leaps from the ground on to the back of an ass like a cat.”
“Have you seen her enchanted, Sancho?” asked the duke.
“What, seen her!” said Sancho; “why, who the devil was it but myself that first thought of the enchantment business? She is as much enchanted as my father.”
The ecclesiastic, when he heard them talking of giants and caitiffs and enchantments, began to suspect that this must be Don Quixote of La Mancha, whose story the duke was always reading; and he had himself often reproved him for it, telling him it was foolish to read such fooleries; and becoming convinced that his suspicion was correct, addressing the duke, he said very angrily to him, “Señor, your excellence will have to give account to God for what this good man does. This Don Quixote, or Don Simpleton, or whatever his name is, cannot, I imagine, be such a blockhead as your excellence would have him, holding out encouragement to him to go on with his vagaries and follies.” Then turning to address Don Quixote he said, “And you, numskull, who put it into your head that you are a knight-errant, and vanquish giants and capture miscreants? Go your ways in a good hour, and in a good hour be it said to you. Go home and bring up your children if you have any, and