His dominant impulse, either way, is greed. Greed makes him doubt: greed makes him trust his master. Yet underneath, there works subtly upon Sancho a sweeter influence: his indefeasible respect for Don Quixote. Howsoever he argue, howsoever clear he see, howsoever he sicken from constant thumpings and sparse earnings, howsoever wry are the pleasures of his Island, Sancho cannot altogether free himself from the dominion of an idealizing will which he can never understand. In a directer way (since he is no intellectual) than that of Sansón Carrasco, he is held and haunted by Don Quixote. When he is absent from his master he is lost. When, in a scene more touching than the pathos of two quarreling lovers, Don Quixote gives him leave to depart homeward, promising him reward for his past service, Sancho bursts into tears and vows that he cannot forsake him. He loves his master. Not greed alone, or if so, the greed of devotion to an ungrasped grandeur, holds him astride his dappled ass to follow Don Quixote to the sea. And yet, he despises him; and he betrays him. He judges him, and he exploits him. He makes sure of his reward in Don Quixote’s will, and he gives up the comfort of his wife to follow him through ridiculous dangers. He is this sensual, lusty, greedy oaf of the soil. And yet in the love that masters him he is Cervantes, himself: Cervantes who created Don Quixote to laugh and to mock--and who remained to worship. For this is the crux of the matter. Cervantes needed Sancho to keep Don Quixote in the perspective for laughter. “Common-sense” rides along with the “madman,” and constantly shows him up. But here is Sancho, shown up himself! Here is Cervantes, shown up! For Cervantes accepts Don Quixote. And that is why we accept him. Cervantes builds up these countless reasons for rejecting him: the havoc wrought by his acts, the shoddy stuff of his dream, the addled way of his brain. It avails naught. Cervantes ends with love. And we--the more humbly in that we have mocked and roared--avow our veneration. Of such stuff is made the holiness of Don Quixote: mildewed notions, slapstick downfalls. We laugh at his unfitness to impose his dream upon a stubborn world: we see well enough that Rocinante is a nag and the knight himself, helmeted with a dish, a mangy addled fellow. And we accept, in order that he may live this nonsense, the disruption of inns, the discomfiture of pilgrims, the routing of funerals, the breaking of bones! Cervantes strives hard to snuff out the aspiring hunger of his soul. For this, Don Quixote is bemuddied and deformed. But Don Quixote lives: and his chief enemy--Cervantes--gives him his blood and his passion, in order that he may triumph. _c. The Book of the Hero_