The Second Counsels to Sancho — Don Quixote

Hamete observes that Don Quixote talks nonsense only on chivalry, and that these second counsels show both wisdom and folly at once. Sancho listens as if memory could carry a government. Cut your nails. Dress in order. Split liveries with the poor. Avoid garlic, onions, and affectation. Dine and drink sparingly. Do not eruct in company. When Sancho asks what the word means, Don Quixote prefers the Latin to the filthy Spanish belch, and says custom will enrich the language until everyone understands.

He warns against dragging proverbs in by the head and shoulders, teaches a gentleman's seat on a horse, forbids family comparisons, and prescribes hose and jerkin. Sancho says he will remember almost none of it unless it is written for his confessor, though he cannot read. He can sign, he adds, or pretend a disabled right hand and make someone else sign, because he will hold the staff.

Don Quixote laments an illiterate governor. Sancho unleashes proverbs until the knight curses sixty thousand devils and predicts the islanders will revolt. Sancho offers to quit on the spot. He would rather go to heaven as plain Sancho, on bread and onions, than to hell as a governor. Don Quixote declares those last words deserve a thousand islands, then they go to dinner.