DAVID THORBURN
433
almost immediately. As Carrasco begins to answer Quixote's first tentative
question concerning the reputation given him by his chronicler, Sancho
breaks in to object that" my lady Dulcinea" was never called Doth: "There
the history 's wrong," he says. Carrasco and Quixote impatiently agree that
this objection is trivial, and try to continue their discourse . But Sancho thrusts
himself forward again after but one paragraph, and this time succeeds in
holding the initiative:
"Tell me, Maste r Bachelor," put in Sancho, "does the adventure with
the Yanguesans come in, when our good Rocinante had a fancy to look
for dainties at the bottom of the sea'"
" The
sage left nothing in his ink-horn," replied Sampson. " He tells
us everything ,
. even to the capers Sancho cut on the blanket ."
" I cut no capers on the blanket," replied Sancho. " But in the air I did,
and
more
than I liked ."
Sancho's interruptions culminate at the end of the chapter in his abrupt
departure. This leave-taking frustrates Carrasco's inquiries concerning certain
details of Part I, and Sancho's motives are characteristic and significant:
" I' m not prepared now, Master Sampson ," replied Sancho, " to go
into details or accounts, for I've got a stomach-ache [literally : I feel faint
in the stomach], and if I don ' t cure it with two gulps of the old stuff, it
will put
me
on St. Lucy 's thorn
[i.e.,
it will make
me
suffer hungerpains].
I have a drop at
home ,
and myoid woman is waiting for
me .
I'll
come
back when I' ve had my dinner , and answer all your worship's questions,
and all the world 's besides.
"
Thus do literary and philosophical speculations yield to earthier claims;
Sancho leaves , "waiting no reply," and the discussion of Cide Hamete's story
is resumed, in the subsequent chapter, only when Sancho returns. The form
of the chapter, then, is controlled not by the learned Bachelor, who has come
to
answer questions but ends by asking them ; and not by Quixote, who waits
passively in the beginning and yields the stage to his squire through most of
the episode ; but by Sancho, who will not officially achieve the office Quixote
has promised him for many pages but is already in governance over the char–
acters in the story and over its very structure.
Sancho's progress in this chapter from the periphery to the center of the
discussion dramatizes in small compass the larger pattern or action of the
Quixote
as a whole. And this enactment in miniature of Sancho's ascension
mirrors not only the larger careers of the two central characters but also, of
course, the book's largest subject, which is the contention between the
Quixotic vision and a recalcitrant empirical reality , whose ultimate domina-
