400 Years Later, Entrepreneurs Following Footsteps of Don Quixote's Squire

Sancho's Wife Ain't Buying it ! The final scene in Cervantes' Don Quixote (1st part, book 4, chapter 25) involves the return of the knight-errant and squire home. This is the most amazing corollary to the plight of the modern entrepreneur's wife you could hope to imagine ! Sancho's wife cuts to the quick:


At the news of this his arrival, Sancho Panza's wife repaired also to to get some tidings of the good man; for she had learned that he was gone away with the knight, to serve him as his squire; and as soon as ever she saw her husband, the question, she asked him was, whether the ass were in health or no ?

Sancho answered that he was come in better health than his master.

'God be thanked,' quoth she, ' who hath done me so great a favour; but tell me now, friend, what profit hast thou reaped by this thy squireship ? What petticoat hast thou brought me home ? What shoes for thy little boys ?'

'I bring none of these things, good wife,' quoth Sancho; 'although I bring other things of more moment and estimation.'

'I am very glad of that,' quoth his wife: 'show me those things of more moment and estimation, good friend I would fain see them, to the end that this heart of mine may be cheered, which hath been so swollen and sorrowful all the time of thine absence.'

'Thou shalt see them at home,' quoth Sancho, 'and therefore rest satisfied for this time; for and it please God that we travel once again to seek adventures, thou shalt see me shortly after an earl or governor of an island, and that not of every ordinary one neither, but of one of the best in the world.'

'I pray God, husband, it may be so,' replied she, 'for we have very great need of it. But what means that island ? for I understand not the word.'

"Honey is not made for the ass's mouth,' quoth Sancho; 'wife, thou shalt know it in good time, yea and shalt wonder to hear the title of ladyship given thee by all thy vassals.'

'What is that thou speakest, Sancho, of lordships, islands, and vassals?' answered Joan Panza (for so she was called, although her husband and she were not kinsfolk, but by reason that in the Mancha the wives are usually called after their husband's surname).

"Do not busy thyself, Joan,' quoth Sancho, 'to know these things on such a sudden; let it suffice that I tell thee the truth, and therewithal sew up thy mouth. I will only say thus much unto thee, as it were by the way, that there is nothing in the world so pleasant as for an honest man to be the squire of a knight-errant that seeks adventures. It is very true that the greatest number of adventures found out succeeded not to a man's satisfaction so much as he would desire; for of a hundred that are encountered, the ninety-and-nine are wont to be cross and untoward ones. I know it by experience, for I have come away myself out of some of them well canvassed, and out of others well beaten. But yes, for all that, it is a fine thing to expect events, traverse groves, search woods, tread on rocks, visit castles, and lodge in inns at a man's pleasure, without paying the devil a cross.'