OF WHAT TOOK PLACE BETWEEN DON QUIXOTE AND HIS NIECE AND HIS
HOUSEKEEPER; ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT CHAPTERS IN THE WHOLE
HISTORY
While Sancho and his wife were flinging proverbs at each other at home,
there was another scene of unrest at Don Quixote's house. The housekeeper
had had a premonition of her master's impending expedition, and soon
perceived by his actions that she had not been alarmed in vain. She and
the niece employed all possible means to restrain him from faring forth;
but to all their admonitions and advice and prayers he made the same
reply: that there must be knights errant in the world to defend the weak
and virtuous and to punish arrogance and sin, and that he was the one to
set the world aright on that score. And when his niece began to bewail
his stubbornness and called down the wrath of heaven upon all tales of
chivalry, he threatened to chastise her for uttering such blasphemies.
Then he burst into a tirade on things and usages pertaining to chivalry,
a discourse so saturated with knowledge that it called forth a cry of
astonishment, a wail of disappointment, and a sigh of pity from the
niece, to whom it suddenly seemed that her uncle had missed his vocation
in life when he did not become a preacher.
This drove Don Quixote to discourse on almost everything under the
sun, and he finished up by reciting poetry, at which the niece became
terror-stricken from superstition, and exclaimed that her uncle knew
everything in the world. She even dared to suppose he knew something
about masonry and could build a house. This daring thought of hers he
immediately corroborated by saying that if he were not so occupied
with dealing out justice to the world, there would be nothing he could
not do, from building cages to making toothpicks.
Just then there was a knock at the door. It was Sancho Panza. As soon
as the housekeeper learned it was he, she fled from the room, for she
had grown to detest him like sin itself. The niece opened the door for
him, and he hastened to his master's room, where he was welcomed by
Don Quixote. And soon they were in the midst of a conversation, which
took place behind locked doors.