Don Quixote [Trans. by Edith Grossman] by Miguel de Cervantes

than wheat, never stopping to think that many people go looking for wool and come back shorn?”
    “Oh, my dear niece,” replied Don Quixote, “how little you understand! Before I am shorn I shall have plucked and removed the beard of any man who imagines he can touch even a single hair of mine.”
    The two women did not wish to respond any further because they saw that he was becoming enraged.
    So it was that he spent two very quiet weeks at home, showing no signs of wanting to repeat his initial lunacies, and during this time he had lively conversations with his two friends the priest and the barber, in which he said that what the world needed most were knights errant and that in him errant chivalry would be reborn. The priest at times contradicted him, and at other times he agreed, because if he did not maintain this ruse, he would not have been able to talk to him.
    During this time, Don Quixote approached a farmer who was a neighbor of his, a good man—if that title can be given to someone who is poor—but without much in the way of brains. In short, he told him so much, and persuaded and promised him so much, that the poor peasant resolved to go off with him and serve as his squire. Among other things, Don Quixote said that he should prepare to go with him gladly, because it might happen that one day he would have an adventure that would gain him, in the blink of an eye, an ínsula, 3 and he would make him its governor. With these promises and others likethem, Sancho Panza, 4 for that was the farmer’s name, left his wife and children and agreed to be his neighbor’s squire.
    Then Don Quixote determined to find some money, and by selling one thing, and pawning another, and undervaluing everything, he managed to put together a reasonable sum. He also acquired a round shield, which he borrowed from a friend, and doing the best he could to repair his broken helmet, he informed his squire of the day and time he planned to start out so that Sancho could supply himself with whatever he thought he would need. He ordered him in particular to bring along saddlebags, and Sancho said he certainly would bring them and also planned to take along a donkey he thought very highly of because he wasn’t one for walking any great distance. As for the donkey, Don Quixote had to stop and think about that for a while, wondering if he recalled any knight errant who had with him a squire riding on a donkey, and none came to mind, yet in spite of this he resolved to take Sancho along, intending to obtain a more honorable mount for him at the earliest opportunity by appropriating the horse of the first discourteous knight he happened to meet. He furnished himself with shirts and all the other things he could, following the advice the innkeeper had given him; and when this had been accomplished and completed, without Panza taking leave of his children and wife, or Don Quixote of his housekeeper and niece, they rode out of the village one night, and no one saw them, and they traveled so far that by dawn they were certain they would not be found even if anyone came looking for them.
    Sancho Panza rode on his donkey like a patriarch, with his saddlebags, and his wineskin, and a great desire to see himself governor of the ínsula his master had promised him. Don Quixote happened to follow the same direction and route he had followed on his first sally, which was through the countryside of Montiel, and he rode there with less difficulty than he had the last time, because at that hour of the morning the sun’s rays fell obliquely and did not tire them. Then Sancho Panza said to his master:
    “Señor Knight Errant, be sure not to forget what your grace promised me about the ínsula; I’ll know how to govern it no matter how big it is.”
    To which Don Quixote replied:
    “You must know, friend Sancho Panza, that it was a very common custom of the knights errant of old to make their squires governors of the ínsulas or kingdoms they won, and I