HKB

← back

Don Quixote

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra · c. 1605–1615 primary

passage 179 of 841 · CHAPTER I WHICH TREATS OF THE CHARACTER AND > CHAPTER XIX. (6/6)

in brief
Sancho persuades Don Quixote to retreat, fearing the routed party will return; they reach a wide valley between hills, eat from the clerical gentlemen’s provisions, but suffer worst of all from lack of wine and water.

hand, hunger presses, we have nothing more to do but make good our retreat, and, as the saying is, the dead to the grave and the living to the loaf.”

And driving his ass before him he begged his master to follow, who, feeling that Sancho was right, did so without replying; and after proceeding some little distance between two hills they found themselves in a wide and retired valley, where they alighted, and Sancho unloaded his beast, and stretched upon the green grass, with hunger for sauce, they breakfasted, dined, lunched, and supped all at once, satisfying their appetites with more than one store of cold meat which the dead man’s clerical gentlemen (who seldom put themselves on short allowance) had brought with them on their sumpter mule. But another piece of ill-luck befell them, which Sancho held the worst of all, and that was that they had no wine to drink, nor even water to moisten their lips; and as thirst tormented them, Sancho, observing that the meadow where they were was full of green and tender grass, said what will be told in the following chapter.

← previous passage read in the full work → next passage →

topics: fate, destiny, and necessity · justice as a virtue · supply, logistics, and encampment

Don Quixote · Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra · 1605–1615