"You will do quite right," said Don Jeronimo; "and there are otherjousts at Barcelona in which Senor Don Quixote may display hisprowess."
"That is what I mean to do," said Don Quixote; "and as it is nowtime, I pray your worships to give me leave to retire to bed, and toplace and retain me among the number of your greatest friends andservants."
"And me too," said Sancho; "maybe I'll be good for something."
With this they exchanged farewells, and Don Quixote and Sanchoretired to their room, leaving Don Juan and Don Jeronimo amazed to seethe medley he made of his good sense and his craziness; and theyfelt thoroughly convinced that these, and not those their Aragoneseauthor described, were the genuine Don Quixote and Sancho. Don Quixoterose betimes, and bade adieu to his hosts by knocking at the partitionof the other room. Sancho paid the landlord magnificently, andrecommended him either to say less about the providing of his inn orto keep it better provided.CHAPTER LX
OF WHAT HAPPENED DON QUIXOTE ON HIS WAY TO BARCELONA
IT WAS a fresh morning giving promise of a cool day as Don Quixotequitted the inn, first of all taking care to ascertain the most directroad to Barcelona without touching upon Saragossa; so anxious was heto make out this new historian, who they said abused him so, to be aliar. Well, as it fell out, nothing worthy of being recordedhappened him for six days, at the end of which, having turned asideout of the road, he was overtaken by night in a thicket of oak or corktrees; for on this point Cide Hamete is not as precise as he usuallyis on other matters.
Master and man dismounted from their beasts, and as soon as they hadsettled themselves at the foot of the trees, Sancho, who had had agood noontide meal that day, let himself, without more ado, pass thegates of sleep. But Don Quixote, whom his thoughts, far more thanhunger, kept awake, could not close an eye, and roamed in fancy to andfro through all sorts of places. At one moment it seemed to him thathe was in the cave of Montesinos and saw Dulcinea, transformed intoa country wench, skipping and mounting upon her she-ass; again thatthe words of the sage Merlin were sounding in his ears, settingforth the conditions to be observed and the exertions to be made forthe disenchantment of Dulcinea. He lost all patience when heconsidered the laziness and want of charity of his squire Sancho;for to the best of his belief he had only given himself five lashes, anumber paltry and disproportioned to the vast number required. At thisthought he felt such vexation and anger that he reasoned the matterthus: "If Alexander the Great cut the Gordian knot, saying, 'To cutcomes to the same thing as to untie,' and yet did not fail to becomelord paramount of all Asia, neither more nor less could happen nowin Dulcinea's disenchantment if I scourge Sancho against his will;for, if it is the condition of the remedy that Sancho shall receivethree thousand and odd lashes, what does it matter to me whether heinflicts them himself, or some one else inflicts them, when theessential point is that he receives them, let them come fromwhatever quarter they may?"
With this idea he went over to Sancho, having first takenRocinante's reins and arranged them so as to be able to flog himwith them, and began to untie the points （the common belief is hehad but one in front） by which his breeches were held up; but theinstant he approached him Sancho woke up in his full senses andcried out, "What is this? Who is touching me and untrussing me?"
"It is I," said Don Quixote, "and I come to make good thyshortcomings and relieve my own distresses; I come to whip thee,Sancho, and wipe off some portion of the debt thou hast undertaken.Dulcinea is perishing, thou art living on regardless, I am dying ofhope deferred; therefore untruss thyself with a good will, for mine itis, here, in this retired spot, to give thee at least two thousandlashes."
"Not a bit of it," said Sancho; "let your worship keep quiet, orelse by the living God the deaf shall hear us; the lashes I pledgedmyself to must be voluntary and not forced upon me, and just now Ihave no fancy to whip myself; it is enough if I give you my word toflog and flap myself when I have a mind."
"It will not do to leave it to thy courtesy, Sancho," said DonQuixote, "for thou art hard of heart and, though a clown, tender offlesh;" and at the same time he strove and struggled to untie him.
Seeing this Sancho got up, and grappling with his master hegripped him with all his might in his arms, giving him a trip with theheel stretched him on the ground on his back, and pressing his rightknee on his chest held his hands in his own so that he could neithermove nor breathe.
"How now, traitor!" exclaimed Don Quixote. "Dost thou revolt againstthy master and natural lord? Dost thou rise against him who gives theehis bread?"
"I neither put down king, nor set up king," said Sancho; "I onlystand up for myself who am my own lord; if your worship promises me tobe quiet, and not to offer to whip me now, I'll let you go free andunhindered; if not-
Traitor and Dona Sancha's foe,
Thou diest on the spot."
Don Quixote gave his promise, and swore by the life of histhoughts not to touch so much as a hair of his garments, and toleave him entirely free and to his own discretion to whip himselfwhenever he pleased.
Sancho rose and removed some distance from the spot, but as he wasabout to place himself leaning against another tree he feltsomething touch his head, and putting up his hands encounteredsomebody's two feet with shoes and stockings on them. He trembled withfear and made for another tree, where the very same thing happenedto him, and he fell a-shouting, calling upon Don Quixote to come andprotect him. Don Quixote did so, and asked him what had happened tohim, and what he was afraid of. Sancho replied that all the trees werefull of men's feet and legs. Don Quixote felt them, and guessed atonce what it was, and said to Sancho, "Thou hast nothing to beafraid of, for these feet and legs that thou feelest but canst not seebelong no doubt to some outlaws and freebooters that have beenhanged on these trees; for the authorities in these parts are wontto hang them up by twenties and thirties when they catch them; wherebyI conjecture that I must be near Barcelona;" and it was, in fact, ashe supposed; with the first light they looked up and saw that thefruit hanging on those trees were freebooters' bodies.
And now day dawned; and if the dead freebooters had scared them,their hearts were no less troubled by upwards of forty living ones,who all of a sudden surrounded them, and in the Catalan tongue badethem stand and wait until their captain came up. Don Quixote was onfoot with his horse unbridled and his lance leaning against a tree,and in short completely defenceless; he thought it best therefore tofold his arms and bow his head and reserve himself for a morefavourable occasion and opportunity. The robbers made haste tosearch Dapple, and did not leave him a single thing of all hecarried in the alforjas and in the valise; and lucky it was for Sanchothat the duke's crowns and those he brought from home were in a girdlethat he wore round him; but for all that these good folk would havestripped him, and even looked to see what he had hidden between theskin and flesh, but for the arrival at that moment of their captain,who was about thirty-four years of age apparently, strongly built,above the middle height, of stern aspect and swarthy complexion. Hewas mounted upon a powerful horse, and had on a coat of mail, withfour of the pistols they call petronels in that country at hiswaist. He saw that his squires （for so they call those who follow thattrade） were about to rifle Sancho Panza, but he ordered them to desistand was at once obeyed, so the girdle escaped. He wondered to seethe lance leaning against the tree, the shield on the ground, andDon Quixote in armour and dejected, with the saddest and mostmelancholy face that sadness itself could produce; and going up to himhe said, "Be not so cast down, good man, for you have not falleninto the hands of any inhuman Busiris, but into Roque Guinart's, whichare more merciful than cruel."
"The cause of my dejection," returned Don Quixote, "is not that Ihave fallen into thy hands, O valiant Roque, whose fame is boundedby no limits on earth, but that my carelessness should have been sogreat that thy soldiers should have caught me unbridled, when it is myduty, according to the rule of knight-errantry which I profess, tobe always on the alert and at all times my own sentinel; for let metell thee, great Roque, had they found me on my horse, with my lanceand shield, it would not have been very easy for them to reduce meto submission, for I am Don Quixote of La Mancha, he who hath filledthe whole world with his achievements."
Roque Guinart at once perceived that Don Quixote's weakness was moreakin to madness than to swagger; and though he had sometimes heard himspoken of, he never regarded the things attributed to him as true, norcould he persuade himself that such a humour could become dominantin the heart of man; he was extremely glad, therefore, to meet him andtest at close quarters what he had heard of him at a distance; so hesaid to him, "Despair not, valiant knight, nor regard as an untowardfate the position in which thou findest thyself; it may be that bythese slips thy crooked fortune will make itself straight; forheaven by strange circuitous ways, mysterious and incomprehensibleto man, raises up the fallen and makes rich the poor."
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