The two left the Ebro in low spirits, Sancho especially. Fifty reales gone from the money he kept felt like having the pupils taken out of his eyes. Simple as he was, he knew that nearly everything his master did was nonsense. So he was watching for a chance to slip away home one day, without settling accounts or saying goodbye. But fortune had arranged things exactly the opposite of what he feared.
At sunset the next day, as they came out of a wood, they saw people at the far end of a green meadow. They were hawking. Among them sat a lady on a snow-white palfrey with green trappings and a silver saddle. She too was dressed in green, and on her left hand perched a hawk.
Don Quixote saw that she must be a great lady, mistress of all those hunters. “Run along, Sancho. Tell that lady of the palfrey and the hawk that the Knight of the Lions kisses the hands of her great beauty. And say that, with her leave, he will come to kiss them and serve her as far as his strength allows. Choose your words carefully, and do not slip in a single one of your proverbs.”