“Heaven grant you may!” said Sancho.  “But, an’ it please you, sit a little more upright in your saddle; you are all to one side.  But that, mayhap, comes from your hurts?”

“It does so,” answered Don Quixote, “and if I do not complain of the pain, it is because a knight-errant must never complain of his wounds, though they be killing him.”

“I have no more to say,” replied Sancho.  “Yet Heaven knows I should be glad to hear your honor complain a bit, now and then, when something ails you.  For my part, I always cry out when I’m hurt, and I am glad the rule about not complaining doesn’t extend to squires.”

That night they spent under the trees, from one of which Don Quixote tore down a branch, to which he fixed the point of his spear, and in some sort that served him for a lance.  Don Quixote neither ate nor slept all the night, but passed his time, as he had learned from his books that a knight should do, in thoughts of the Lady Dulcinea.  As for Sancho Panza, he had brought with him a big bottle of wine, and some food in his wallet, and he stuffed himself as full as he could hold, and slept like a top.

As they rode along next day, they came to the Pass of Lapice.

“Here, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “is the spot where adventures should begin.  Now may we hope to thrust our hands, as it were, up to the very elbows in adventures.  But remember this!  However sore pressed and in danger I may be when fighting with another knight, you must not offer to draw your sword to help me.  It is against the laws of chivalry for a squire to attack a knight.”

“Never fear me, master,” said Sancho.  “I’ll be sure to obey you; I have ever loved peace.  But if a knight offers to set upon me first, there is no rule forbidding me to hit him back, is there?”

“None,” answered Don Quixote, “only do not help me.”

“I will not,” said Sancho.  “Never trust me if I don’t keep that commandment as well as I do the Sabbath.”

IV

How don Quixote won A helmet; how he fought with two armies; and how Sancho’s ass was stolen

Many were the adventures that now befell Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.  In the very first, wherein he fought with a man from Biscay, whom he left lying in a pool of blood, Don Quixote lost part of his helmet, and had the half of one of his ears sliced off by the Biscayan’s sword.  The accident to the helmet was a great grief to him, and he swore an oath that until he had taken from some other knight as good a helmet as that which was now made useless to him, he would never again eat his food on a table-cloth.

One day as they rode along a highway between two villages Don Quixote halted and looked eagerly at something.

“Sancho,” said he, “dost thou not see yonder knight that comes riding this way on a dapple-gray steed, with a helmet of gold on his head?”