For links to each of the first four parts, see related posts below.
Sancho feels that he is not getting paid enough by Don Quixote and asks for more money. Here is what happens. From Volume II.
“When I worked for Tom Carrasco, the father of the
bachelor Samson Carrasco that your worship knows,” replied Sancho, “I used to
earn two ducats a month besides my food; I can’t tell what I can earn with your
worship, though I know a knight-errant’s squire has harder times of it than he
who works for a farmer; for after all, we who work for farmers, however much we
toil all day, at the worst, at night, we have our olla supper and sleep in a
bed, which I have not slept in since I have been in your worship’s service, if
it wasn’t the short time we were in Don Diego de Miranda’s house, and the feast
I had with the skimmings I took off Camacho’s pots, and what I ate, drank, and
slept in Basilio’s house; all the rest of the time I have been sleeping on the
hard ground under the open sky, exposed to what they call the inclemencies of
heaven, keeping life in me with scraps of cheese and crusts of bread, and
drinking water either from the brooks or from the springs we come to on these
by-paths we travel.”
“I own, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “that all thou
sayest is true; how much, thinkest thou, ought I to give thee over and above
what Tom Carrasco gave thee?”
“I think,” said Sancho, “that if your worship was to
add on two reals a month I’d consider myself well paid; that is, as far as the
wages of my labour go; but to make up to me for your worship’s pledge and
promise to me to give me the government of an island, it would be fair to add
six reals more, making thirty in all.”
“Very good,” said Don Quixote; “it is twenty-five days
since we left our village, so reckon up, Sancho, according to the wages you
have made out for yourself, and see how much I owe you in proportion, and pay
yourself, as I said before, out of your own hand.”
“O body o’ me!” said Sancho, “but your worship is very
much out in that reckoning; for when it comes to the promise of the island we
must count from the day your worship promised it to me to this present hour we
are at now.
“Well, how long is it, Sancho, since I promised it to
you?” said Don Quixote.
“If I remember rightly,” said Sancho, “it must be over
twenty years, three days more or less.”
Don Quixote gave himself a great slap on the forehead
and began to laugh heartily, and said he, “Why, I have not been wandering,
either in the Sierra Morena or in the whole course of our sallies, but barely
two months, and thou sayest, Sancho, that it is twenty years since I promised
thee the island. I believe now thou wouldst have all the money thou hast of
mine go in thy wages. If so, and if that be thy pleasure, I give it to thee
now, once and for all, and much good may it do thee, for so long as I see myself
rid of such a good-for-nothing squire I’ll be glad to be left a pauper without
a rap. But tell me, thou perverter of the squirely rules of knight-errantry,
where hast thou ever seen or read that any knight-errant’s squire made terms
with his lord, ‘you must give me so much a month for serving you’? Plunge,
scoundrel, rogue, monster—for such I take thee to be—plunge, I say, into the
mare magnum of their histories; and if thou shalt find that any squire ever
said or thought what thou hast said now, I will let thee nail it on my
forehead, and give me, over and above, four sound slaps in the face. Turn the
rein, or the halter, of thy Dapple, and begone home; for one single step
further thou shalt not make in my company. O bread thanklessly received! O promises
ill-bestowed! O man more beast than human being! Now, when I was about to raise
thee to such a position, that, in spite of thy wife, they would call thee ‘my
lord,’ thou art leaving me? Thou art going now when I had a firm and fixed
intention of making thee lord of the best island in the world? Well, as thou
thyself hast said before now, honey is not for the mouth of the ass. Ass thou
art, ass thou wilt be, and ass thou wilt end when the course of thy life is
run; for I know it will come to its close before thou dost perceive or discern
that thou art a beast.”
Sancho regarded Don Quixote earnestly while he was
giving him this rating, and was so touched by remorse that the tears came to
his eyes, and in a piteous and broken voice he said to him, “Master mine, I
confess that, to be a complete ass, all I want is a tail; if your worship will
only fix one on to me, I’ll look on it as rightly placed, and I’ll serve you as
an ass all the remaining days of my life. Forgive me and have pity on my folly,
and remember I know but little, and, if I talk much, it’s more from infirmity
than malice; but he who sins and mends commends himself to God.”
“I should have been surprised, Sancho,” said Don
Quixote, “if thou hadst not introduced some bit of a proverb into thy speech.
Well, well, I forgive thee, provided thou dost mend and not show thyself in
future so fond of thine own interest, but try to be of good cheer and take
heart, and encourage thyself to look forward to the fulfillment of my promises,
which, by being delayed, does not become impossible.”
Sancho
said he would do so, and keep up his heart as best he could. They then entered
the grove, and Don Quixote settled himself at the foot of an elm, and Sancho at
that of a beech, for trees of this kind and others like them always have feet
but no hands. Sancho passed the night in pain, for with the evening dews the
blow of the staff made itself felt all the more. Don Quixote passed it in his
never-failing meditations; but, for all that, they had some winks of sleep, and
with the appearance of daylight they pursued their journey in quest of the
banks of the famous Ebro, where that befell them which will be told in the
following chapter."
