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Don Quixote

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra · c. 1605–1615 primary

passage 126 of 841 · CHAPTER I WHICH TREATS OF THE CHARACTER AND > CHAPTER X. (4/4)

in brief
The pair eat their sparse dry fare, then fail to reach a house and choose to spend the night near goatherds, with Sancho displeased and Don Quixote pleased at sleeping under open heaven.

of dry fruit for your worship, as you are a knight; and for myself, as I am not one, I will furnish them with poultry and other things more substantial.”

“I do not say, Sancho,” replied Don Quixote, “that it is imperative on knights-errant not to eat anything else but the fruits thou speakest of; only that their more usual diet must be those, and certain herbs they found in the fields which they knew and I know too.”

“A good thing it is,” answered Sancho, “to know those herbs, for to my thinking it will be needful some day to put that knowledge into practice.”

And here taking out what he said he had brought, the pair made their repast peaceably and sociably. But anxious to find quarters for the night, they with all despatch made an end of their poor dry fare, mounted at once, and made haste to reach some habitation before night set in; but daylight and the hope of succeeding in their object failed them close by the huts of some goatherds, so they determined to pass the night there, and it was as much to Sancho’s discontent not to have reached a house, as it was to his master’s satisfaction to sleep under the open heaven, for he fancied that each time this happened to him he performed an act of ownership that helped to prove his chivalry.

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topics: fate, destiny, and necessity · pleasure, pain, and the good life · the passions and the emotions

Don Quixote · Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra · 1605–1615