One of the muleteers in attendance, who could not
have had much good nature in him, hearing the poor
prostrate man blustering in this style, was unable
to refrain from giving him an answer on his ribs; and
coming up to him he seized his lance, and having broken
it in pieces, with one of them he began so to belabour
our Don Quixote that, notwithstanding and in spite
of his armour, he milled him like a measure of wheat.
His masters called out not to lay on so hard and to
leave him alone, but the muleteers blood was up, and
he did not care to drop the game until he had vented
the rest of his wrath, and gathering up the remaining
fragments of the lance he finished with a discharge
upon the unhappy victim, who all through the storm
of sticks that rained on him never ceased threatening
heaven, and earth, and the brigands, for such they
seemed to him. At last the muleteer was tired,
and the traders continued their journey, taking with
them matter for talk about the poor fellow who had
been cudgelled. He when he found himself alone
made another effort to rise; but if he was unable
when whole and sound, how was he to rise after having
been thrashed and well-nigh knocked to pieces?
And yet he esteemed himself fortunate, as it seemed
to him that this was a regular knight-errant’s
mishap, and entirely, he considered, the fault of his
horse. However, battered in body as he was, to
rise was beyond his power.
CHAPTER V.
IN WHICH THE NARRATIVE OF OUR KNIGHT’S MISHAP IS CONTINUED
Finding, then, that, in fact he could not move, he
thought himself of having recourse to his usual remedy,
which was to think of some passage in his books, and
his craze brought to his mind that about Baldwin and
the Marquis of Mantua, when Carloto left him wounded
on the mountain side, a story known by heart by the
children, not forgotten by the young men, and lauded
and even believed by the old folk; and for all that
not a whit truer than the miracles of Mahomet.
This seemed to him to fit exactly the case in which
he found himself, so, making a show of severe suffering,
he began to roll on the ground and with feeble breath
repeat the very words which the wounded knight of
the wood is said to have uttered:
Where art thou, lady mine, that thou
My sorrow dost not rue?
Thou canst not know it, lady mine,
Or else thou art untrue.
And so he went on with the ballad as far as the lines:
O noble Marquis of Mantua,
My Uncle and liege lord!
As chance would have it, when he had got to this line
there happened to come by a peasant from his own village,
a neighbour of his, who had been with a load of wheat
to the mill, and he, seeing the man stretched there,
came up to him and asked him who he was and what was
the matter with him that he complained so dolefully.
Don Quixote was firmly persuaded that this was the
Marquis of Mantua, his uncle, so the only answer he
made was to go on with his ballad, in which he told
the tale of his misfortune, and of the loves of the
Emperor’s son and his wife all exactly as the
ballad sings it.
