fit to hold the contents of a slaughter-house; they swallowed up whole
sheep and hid them away in their insides without showing any more sign of
them than if they were pigeons. Countless were the hares ready skinned
and the plucked fowls that hung on the trees for burial in the pots,
numberless the wildfowl and game of various sorts suspended from the
branches that the air might keep them cool. Sancho counted more than
sixty wine skins of over six gallons each, and all filled, as it proved
afterwards, with generous wines. There were, besides, piles of the
whitest bread, like the heaps of corn one sees on the threshing-floors.
There was a wall made of cheeses arranged like open brick-work, and two
cauldrons full of oil, bigger than those of a dyer's shop, served for
cooking fritters, which when fried were taken out with two mighty
shovels, and plunged into another cauldron of prepared honey that stood
close by. Of cooks and cook-maids there were over fifty, all clean,
brisk, and blithe. In the capacious belly of the ox were a dozen soft
little sucking-pigs, which, sewn up there, served to give it tenderness
and flavour. The spices of different kinds did not seem to have been
bought by the pound but by the quarter, and all lay open to view in a
great chest. In short, all the preparations made for the wedding were in
rustic style, but abundant enough to feed an army.

Sancho observed all, contemplated all, and everything won his heart. The
first to captivate and take his fancy were the pots, out of which he
would have very gladly helped himself to a moderate pipkinful; then the
wine skins secured his affections; and lastly, the produce of the
frying-pans, if, indeed, such imposing cauldrons may be called
frying-pans; and unable to control himself or bear it any longer, he
approached one of the busy cooks and civilly but hungrily begged
permission to soak a scrap of bread in one of the pots; to which the cook
made answer, "Brother, this is not a day on which hunger is to have any