The History of Don Quixote of la Mancha Author:Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: of the injured, and the support of the distressed, are nowhere so perfectly to be expected as from the generous professors of knight-errantry. Therefore I thank ... more »heaven a thousand times for having qualified me to answer the necessities of the miserable by such a function. As for the hardships and accidents that may attend me, I look upon them as no discouragements, since proceeding from so noble a cause. Then let this matron be admitted to make known her request, and I will refer her for redress to the force of my arm, and the intrepid resolution of my courageous soul." CHAPTER XXXVIi. THE FAMOUS ADVENTURE OF THE DISCONSOLATE MATRON CONTINUED. The duke and duchess were mightily pleased to find Don Quixote wrought up to a resolution so agreeable to their design. But Sancho, who made his observations, was not so well satisfied. " I am in a bodily fear," quoth he, " that this same Mistress Waiting-woman will be a balk to my preferment . I remember I once knew a Toledo apothecary that talked like a Canary bird, and used to say, Wherever come old waiting-women, good luck can Happen there to no man. Body o' me, he knew them too well, and therefore valued them accordizrgly. He could have eaten them all with a grain of salt . Since then the best of them are so plaguy troublesome and impertinent, what will those be that are in doleful dumps, like this same Countess Threefolds, three skirts, or three tails, what do you call her?" " Hold your tongue, Sancho," said Don Quixote. " This matron, that comes so far iu search of me, lives too remote to lie under the lash of the apothecary's satire. Besides, you are to remember she is a countess; and when ladies of that quality become governantes, or waiting-women, it is only to queens or empresses; and in their own houses they are as absolu...« less