"For goodness' sake," cried Sancho, "take care how you go knocking your head against rocks, for you might happen to come up against so ungracious a rock that it would put an end to the penance altogether. If the knocks on the head are necessary, I should content yourself, seeing that this madness is all make-believe, with striking your head on some softer thing, and leave the rest to me, for I will tell your lady that I saw you strike your head on the point of a rock that was harder than a diamond." "I thank thee, Sancho, for thy good will," replied the knight, "but the rules of knighthood forbid me to act or to speak a lie, and therefore the knocks of the head must be real solid knocks, and it will be necessary for thee to leave me some lint to cure them, seeing that fortune has deprived us of that precious balsam." "It was worse to lose the ass," said Sancho, "seeing that with him we lost lint and everything; but pray, your worship, never mention that horrible balsam again, for the very name of it nearly turns me inside out. And now write your letter, and let me saddle Rozinante and begone, for I warrant when I once get to Toboso I will tell the Lady Dulcinea such strange things of your follies and madness, that I shall make her as soft as a glove even though I find her harder than a cork-tree. And with her sweet and honied answer I will return as speedily as a witch on a broom-stick, and release you from your penance." "But how shall we write a letter here?" said Don Quixote. "And how can you write the order for the handing over to me of the ass-colts?" asked Sancho. "Seeing there is no paper," said the knight, "we might, like the ancients, write on waxen tablets, but that wax is as hard to find as paper. But now that I come to think of it, there is Cardenio's pocket-book. I will write on that, and thou shalt have the matter of it written out in a good round hand at the first village wherein thou shalt find a schoolmaster." "But what is to be done about the signature?" asked Sancho. "The letters of Amadis were never signed," replied Don Quixote. "That is all very well," said Sancho, "but the paper for the three asses must be signed, for if it be copied out they shall say it is false, and then I shall not get the ass-colts." "Well, then, the order for the ass-colts shall be signed in the book," said Don Quixote; "and as for the love-letter, thou shalt put this ending to it, 'Yours till death, the Knight of the Rueful Countenance.' And it will be no great matter that it goes in a strange hand, for as well as I remember Dulcinea can neither read nor write, nor has she ever seen my handwriting. For indeed, during the twelve years I have been loving her more dearly than the light of my eyes, I have only seen her four times, and I doubt if she hath ever noticed me at all, so closely have her father Lorenzo Corchuelo, and her mother Aldonza brought her up."