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The first harnessed his mules, and the last thanked Don Quixote for his bounty, and promised to acquaint the king himself with his heroic action when he came to court.
Sancho was quite worried lest he should lose his island and his titles and all the other honors he had expected, and the curate did his best to calm his fears. The good man then explained to Cardenio and Dorothea how they had planned to take Don Quixote back to his home by persuading him to go there on an adventure in aid of a distressed damsel.
Knowing Sancho's covetousness, he offered him money as a bribe. Now Sancho became interested, and consented, for the love of his wife and children, to whip himself at a price of a quarter-real a lash, generously throwing the five lashes he had already given himself into the bargain. "O blessed Sancho! O dear Sancho!" exclaimed Don Quixote.
Don Quixote, when he heard such blasphemies uttered against his lady Dulcinea, could not endure it, and lifting his pike, without saying anything to Sancho or uttering a word, he gave him two such thwacks that he brought him to the ground; and had it not been that Dorothea cried out to him to spare him he would have no doubt taken his life on the spot.
He had not yet been knighted. On this subject he thought long and deeply, and at last he asked the innkeeper to come with him to the stable. Having shut the door, Don Quixote threw himself at the landlord's feet, saying, "I will never rise from this place, most valorous Knight, until you grant me a boon."
Charging by sound and instinct rather than by sight, not seeing whether the knight was coming or going, Don Quixote set upon him with such blind fury that with one thrust of his lance he sent the bespangled gentleman flying out of his saddle, so that he fell flat on the ground, seemingly dead.
And now night came, and with it the appointed time for the arrival of the famous horse Clavileno, the non-appearance of which was already beginning to make Don Quixote uneasy, for it struck him that, as Malambruno was so long about sending it, either he himself was not the knight for whom the adventure was reserved, or else Malambruno did not dare to meet him in single combat.
What thinkest thou of the matter, Sancho my son?" "I don't know what to think," answered Sancho, "not being as well read as your worship in errant writings; but for all that I venture to say and swear that these apparitions that are about us are not quite catholic." "Catholic!" said Don Quixote.
When Don Quixote saw himself caged and hoisted on the cart in this way, he said, "Many grave histories of knights-errant have I read; but never yet have I read, seen, or heard of their carrying off enchanted knights-errant in this fashion, or at the slow pace that these lazy, sluggish animals promise; for they always take them away through the air with marvellous swiftness, enveloped in a dark thick cloud, or on a chariot of fire, or it may be on some hippogriff or other beast of the kind; but to carry me off like this on an ox-cart!
This done, Roger, looking like Don Quixote de la Mancha in his penitential shirt, mounted into bed again, and quietly lay down; wondering, half-sober, at the strange and sudden squall. He had not long to wonder.
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