“Well then, the fact is, friend Sancho,” said the duke, “that unless you become softer than a ripe fig, you shall not get hold of the government. It would be a nice thing for me to send my islanders a cruel governor with flinty bowels, who won’t yield to the tears of afflicted damsels or to the prayers of wise, magisterial, ancient enchanters and sages. In short, Sancho, either you must be whipped by yourself, or they must whip you, or you shan’t be governor.”
“Señor,” said Sancho, “won’t two days’ grace be given me in which to consider what is best for me?”
“No, certainly not,” said Merlin; “here, this minute, and on the spot, the matter must be settled; either Dulcinea will return to the cave of Montesinos and to her former condition of peasant wench, or else in her present form shall be carried to the Elysian fields, where she will remain waiting until the number of stripes is completed.”
“Now then, Sancho!” said the duchess, “show courage, and gratitude for your master Don Quixote’s bread that you have eaten; we are all bound to oblige and please him for his benevolent disposition and lofty chivalry. Consent to this whipping, my son; to the devil with the devil, and leave fear to milksops, for ‘a stout heart breaks bad luck,’ as you very well know.”
To this Sancho replied with an irrelevant remark, which, addressing Merlin, he made to him, “Will your worship tell me, Señor Merlin—when that courier devil came up he gave my master a message from Señor Montesinos, charging him to wait for him here, as he was coming to arrange how the lady Doña Dulcinea del Toboso was to be disenchanted; but up to the present we have not seen Montesinos, nor anything like him.”
To which Merlin made answer, “The devil, Sancho, is a blockhead and a great scoundrel; I sent him to look for your master, but not with a