Part 6 (1/2)
Then, spurring his mule, he pa.s.sed forward.
Don Quixote, highly resenting this answer, laid hold of his bridle and said: ”Stand, and with more civility give me the account I demand; otherwise I challenge ye all to battle.”
The mule was timid, and started so much upon his touching the bridle, that, rising on her hind legs, she threw her rider over the crupper to the ground. A lacquey that came on foot, seeing the man in white fall, began to revile Don Quixote, whose choler being now raised, he couched his spear, and immediately attacking one of the mourners, laid him on the ground grievously wounded; then turning about to the rest, it was worth seeing with what agility he attacked and defeated them; and it seemed as if wings at that instant had sprung on Rozinante--so lightly and swiftly he moved! All the white-robed people, being timorous and unarmed, soon quitted the skirmish and ran over the plain with their lighted torches, looking like so many masqueraders on a carnival or festival night. The mourners were so wrapped up and m.u.f.fled in their long robes that they could make no exertion; so that Don Quixote, with entire safety, a.s.sailed them all, and, sorely against their will, obliged them to quit the field; for they thought him no man, but the devil from h.e.l.l broke loose upon them to seize the dead body they were conveying in the litter.
All this Sancho beheld with admiration at his master's intrepidity, and said to himself: ”This master of mine is certainly as valiant and magnanimous as he pretends to be.”
A burning torch lay upon the ground near the first whom the mule had overthrown, by the light of which Don Quixote espied him, and going up to him, placed the point of his spear to his throat, commanding him to surrender, on pain of death. To which the fallen man answered: ”I am surrendered enough already, since I cannot stir, for one of my legs is broken. I beseech you, sir, if you are a Christian gentleman, do not kill me: you would commit a great sacrilege, for I am a licentiate and have taken the lesser orders.”
”Who the devil, then,” said Don Quixote, ”brought you hither, being an ecclesiastic?”
”Who, sir?” replied the fallen man; ”my evil fortune.”
”A worse fate now threatens you,” said Don Quixote, ”unless you reply satisfactorily to all my first questions.”
”Your wors.h.i.+p shall soon be satisfied,” answered the licentiate; ”and therefore you must know, sir, that though I told you before I was a licentiate, I am in fact only a bachelor of arts, and my name is Alonzo Lopez. I am a native of Alcovendas, and came from the city of Baeza with eleven more ecclesiastics, the same who fled with the torches. We were attending the corpse in that litter to the city of Segovia. It is that of a gentleman who died in Baeza, where he was deposited till now, that, as I said before, we are carrying his bones to their place of burial in Segovia, where he was born.”
”And who killed him?” demanded Don Quixote.
”G.o.d,” replied the bachelor, ”by means of a pestilential fever.”
”Then,” said Don Quixote, ”our Lord hath saved me the labor of revenging his death, in case he had been slain by any other hand. But, since he fell by the hand of Heaven, there is nothing expected from us but patience and a silent shrug; for just the same must I have done had it been His pleasure to p.r.o.nounce the fatal sentence upon me. It is proper that your reverence should know that I am a knight of La Mancha, Don Quixote by name, and that it is my office and profession to go over the world righting wrongs and redressing grievances.”
He that seeketh danger perisheth therein.
Fear hath many eyes.
Evil to him that evil seeks.
Everybody has not discretion to take things by the right handle.
He loves thee well who makes thee weep.
THE GRAND ADVENTURE AND RICH PRIZE OF MAMBRINO'S HELMET.
About this time it began to rain a little, and Sancho proposed entering the fulling-mill; but Don Quixote had conceived such an abhorrence of them for the late jest, that he would by no means go in: turning, therefore, to the right hand, they struck into another road, like that they had travelled through the day before. Soon after, Don Quixote discovered a man on horseback, who had on his head something which glittered as if it had been of gold; and scarcely had he seen it when, turning to Sancho, he said, ”I am of opinion, Sancho, there is no proverb but what is true, because they are all sentences drawn from experience itself, the mother of all the sciences; especially that which says, 'Where one door is shut another is opened.' I say this because, if fortune last night shut the door against what we sought, deceiving us with the fulling-mills, it now opens wide another, for a better and more certain adventure; in which, if I am deceived, the fault will be mine, without imputing it to my ignorance of fulling-mills, or to the darkness of night. This I say because, if I mistake not, there comes one towards us who carries on his head Mambrino's helmet, concerning which thou mayest remember I swore the oath.”
”Take care, sir, what you say, and more what you do,” said Sancho; ”for I would not wish for other fulling-mills, to finish the milling and mas.h.i.+ng our senses.”
”The devil take thee!” replied Don Quixote: ”what has a helmet to do with fulling-mills?”
”I know not,” answered Sancho; ”but in faith, if I might talk as much as I used to do, perhaps I could give such reasons that your wors.h.i.+p would see you are mistaken in what you say.”
”How can I be mistaken in what I say, scrupulous traitor?” said Don Quixote. ”Tell me, seest thou not yon knight coming towards us on a dapple-gray steed, with a helmet of gold on his head?”
”What I see and perceive,” answered Sancho, ”is only a man on a gray a.s.s like mine, with something on his head that glitters.”
”Why, that is Mambrino's helmet,” said Don Quixote; ”retire, and leave me alone to deal with him, and thou shalt see how, in order to save time, I shall conclude this adventure without speaking a word, and the helmet I have so much desired remain my own.”
”I shall take care to get out of the way,” replied Sancho; ”but Heaven grant, I say again, it may not prove another fulling-mill adventure.”