noon
Instead of trying to improve the national taste , they produced tawdry plays . The canon cited three excellent plays , however , that he had seen at Madrid , which had earned great profits for their producers ; this proved to the canon that the great mass of the public did appreciate a really good play if it was only produced . While the two clergymen were thus whiling away the time , the barber approached and told the curate they had reached a place which to him seemed a good pasture for the oxen . It was now noon , and the canon decided to join them in their rest . He offered them food out of the provisions that he had brought along on a pack-mule . The rest of the canon 's mules were sent to an inn , which was seen nearby , to be fed there . Seeing his master unguarded , Sancho decided the time had come when he could speak undisturbedly to him , so he hastened to tell him of the plot that the curate and the barber had hit upon .