WHEREIN IS SET FORTH HOW GOVERNOR SANCHO PANZA'S WIFE
RECEIVED A MESSAGE AND A GIFT FROM THE DUCHESS; AND ALSO
WHAT BEFELL THE PAGE WHO CARRIED THE LETTER TO TERESA PANZA
The Duchess did not forget her promise, and she sent the page who had
played the part of Dulcinea when the Devil entered a plea for her
disenchantment, with Governor Sancho's letter and bundle to his wife.
At the same time the Duchess entrusted him with a string of coral
beads as a gift from herself to Teresa Panza, with which gift went a
letter as well.
When the page reached the village of La Mancha he saw, on entering it,
some women washing clothes in a brook; and he found that one of them
was no other than the Governor's young daughter. She eagerly ran to
the good-looking young man, and, breathless with excitement at the
thought of his having news from her father, she skipped along in front
of him until they had reached their little house.
Teresa Panza was spinning, and she came out in a gray petticoat,
vigorous, sunburnt and healthy, and wanted to know what all the
excitement was about. The page quickly jumped from his horse, thrust
himself on his knees before her, and exclaimed to the bewildered
woman: "Let me kiss your hand, Senora Dona Panza, as the lawful and
only wife of Senor Don Sancho Panza, rightful governor of the island
of Barataria."
But by this time the poor woman had got over her first surprise, and
she bade him rise, saying that he should not do things like that, and
that she was only a poor country woman, and the wife of a squire
errant, not a governor. However, when the page had given her the
letters and the gifts, her doubts were crushed, and she decided that
Sancho's master must have given her husband the government he had
promised him, the one that Sancho had been talking about all the time.
And then she asked the page to read the letters to her, since she
herself had not learned that art, although she could spin, she said.
When the page had finished reading the Duchess' letter, poor Teresa
Panza was overcome with gratitude to the gracious lady who had made
her husband, a poor illiterate booby, governor--and a good one
besides--and who had deigned to ask her, humble woman that she was,
for a couple of dozen or so of acorns.
"Ah, what a good, plain, lowly lady!" she exclaimed. "May I be buried
with ladies of that sort, and not with the gentlewomen we have in this
town, that fancy, because they are gentlewomen, the wind must not
touch them, and go to church with as much airs as if they were queens,
no less, and who seem to think they are disgraced if they look as a
farmer's wife! And see here how this good lady, for all she is a
Duchess, calls me her friend, and treats me as if I were her equal!"
Then she told her Sanchica to make ready a meal, with plenty of eggs
and bacon, for the lad who had brought them such good news, while she
herself ran out and told the neighbors of their great luck. Soon
Samson Carrasco and the curate came to the house, having heard the
news, and wanted to know what madness had taken possession of Sancho's
wife. But when they had read the letters and had seen the presents,
they themselves were perplexed, and did not know what to make of it;
and when they had met the page and he had confirmed everything that
was said in the letters, they were convinced, although they were at a
loss to understand how it all had come to happen.
The Duchess' asking for a few acorns, they could not quite comprehend,
but even this was soon explained, for the page assured them that his
lady, the Duchess, was so plain and unassuming that she had even been
known to have borrowed a comb from a peasant-woman neighbor on one
occasion; and he added that the ladies of Aragon were not nearly as
stiff and arrogant as those of Castile.
Sanchica's greatest concern centered around her father's legs. She was
anxious to learn how he covered them, now that he had become governor.
She was hoping that he would wear trunk-hose, for she had always had a
secret longing, she said, to see her father in tights; "What a sight
he must be in them!" she added.
The page replied that he had not observed her father's legs or how
they were dressed; but the joking way in which he gave his answer
furnished the curate and the bachelor with a fresh doubt as to the
reality of the governorship and Sancho's position. Yet they could not
forget the coral beads and the fine hunting-suit that the page had
brought, and which pointed to some truth in the matter.
Sanchica was anxious to make the trip to her father's island at once
with the messenger, who told them he had to leave that evening; and
Teresa Panza wanted to know whether the curate had heard of any one in
the village going to Madrid or Toledo, for she thought that she at
least ought to provide herself with a hooped petticoat, now that she
was the wife of a distinguished governor and no doubt destined to be
made a countess.
And while mother and daughter were contemplating and worrying about
their new position in life, they interspersed their sentences with so
many proverbs that the curate felt obliged to remark that he thought
that all the Panzas were born with a sackful of proverbs in their
insides. The page told them here that the Governor uttered them most
frequently and spontaneously, much to the amusement of the Duke and
the Duchess; and then he reminded the Governor's lady of his hunger.
But the curate softly took him by the arm and whispered to him that
poor Teresa Panza had more will to serve than she had means, and
invited him to sup at his own house.
In order not to lose weight or starve, the page consented; and the
curate was glad to have an opportunity to talk with him alone.
Sanchica again expressed her desire to travel with the page; and the
page tried to persuade her not to come along, for, he said, the
daughters of governors must travel in a coach and in style, with many
attendants. The girl thought that was nonsense, however, and it was
not until her mother hushed her up with her proverbial logic that she
ceased arguing. Said mother Teresa Panza to her daughter: "As the time
so the behavior: when it was Sancho it was Sanchica, when it is
governor it is senorita." And that settled it.
The bachelor offered to write letters for Teresa Panza to her husband
and the Duchess; but, somehow, she did not seem to trust him, for she
refused his offer. Instead she induced a young acolyte to write the
epistles for her, paying him with the eggs which she was to have used
for the page's supper.