“What persons or what castle art thou talking of, madman?” said one of the millers; “art thou for carrying off the people who come to grind corn in these mills?”
“That’s enough,” said Don Quixote to himself, “it would be preaching in the desert to attempt by entreaties to induce this rabble to do any virtuous action. In this adventure two mighty enchanters must have encountered one another, and one frustrates what the other attempts; one provided a bark for me, and the other upset me; God help us, this world is all machinations and schemes at cross purposes one with the other. I can do no more.” And then turning towards the mills he said aloud, “Friends, whoe’er ye be that are immured in that prison, forgive me that, to my misfortune and yours, I cannot deliver you from your misery; this adventure is doubtless reserved and destined for some other knight.”
So saying he settled with the fishermen, and paid fifty reals for the boat, which Sancho handed to them very much against the grain, saying, “With a couple more bark businesses like this we shall have sunk our whole capital, which is none too large.”
The fishermen and the millers stood staring in amazement at the two figures, so very different to all appearance from ordinary men, and were wholly unable to make out the drift of the observations and questions Don Quixote addressed to them; and coming to the conclusion that they were madmen, they left them and betook themselves, the millers to their mills, and the fishermen to their huts.
Whereupon Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, like a pair of senseless animals themselves, returned to the animals they had left, and thus ended the adventure of the enchanted bark.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE WOODEN HORSE
Note.—Don Quixote and Sancho his squire, having encountered in a forest a certain duke and his duchess, had been invited to pass some time in the ducal palace. The duke and his friends, bent on amusement, persuaded Don Quixote that a vile enchanter, angered at some ladies, had for punishment caused heavy beards to grow on their faces. They even showed him the ladies, impersonated, of course, by men; and they persuaded him that the beards would be removed if he, with his squire, would take a long ride on a famous wooden horse, Clavileño.
And now night came, and with it the appointed time for the arrival of the famous horse Clavileño, the non-appearance of which was already beginning to make Don Quixote uneasy, for it struck him that, as Malambruno[467-1] 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. But lo! suddenly there came into the garden four wild-men all clad in green ivy bearing on their shoulders a great wooden horse. They placed it on its feet on the ground, and one of the wild-men said, “Let the knight who has heart for it mount this machine.”
Here Sancho exclaimed, “I don’t mount, for neither have I the heart nor am I a knight.”