Don Quixote of the Mancha, Retold by Judge Parry

by Sir Edward Abbott Parry; Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

'Peace, fellow!' cried Don Quixote; 'what has a helmet to do with fulling-mills?'

'I know not,' replied Sancho; 'but if I might speak as I used to, I would give you such reasons that your Worship should see that you were mistaken in what you say.'

'How can I be mistaken in what I say?' cried Don Quixote. 'Tell me, seest thou not that Knight who comes riding towards us on a dapple grey horse, with a helmet of gold on his head?'

'That which I see and make out,' replied Sancho, 'is nothing but a man on a grey ass like mine carrying on his head something which shines.'

'Why that is Mambrino's helmet,' said Don Quixote. 'Stand aside and leave me alone with him, and thou shalt see how, without a word, this adventure shall be ended and the helmet I have longed for be mine.'

'As to standing aside,' muttered Sancho, 'that I will take care to do, but I trust this is not another case of fulling-mills.'

'I have already told thee,' said Don Quixote angrily, 'to make no mention of the mills, and if thou dost not obey me, I vow that I will batter the soul out of thy body.'

At this Sancho, fearing lest his Master should carry out his threat, held his peace.

Now the truth of the matter as to the helmet, the horse, and the Knight which Don Quixote saw, was this. There were in that neighbourhood two villages, the one so small that it had neither shop nor barber, but the larger one had; and the barber, therefore, served the smaller village on any occasion when any one wanted his beard trimmed. It so happened that he was now journeying to the smaller village, bringing with him a brazen basin, and as he rode along it chanced to rain, and therefore, to save his hat, which was a new one, he clapped the basin on his head, and the basin being clean scoured, glittered half a league off. He rode upon a grey ass, as Sancho said, and that was the reason why Don Quixote took him to be a Knight with a helmet of gold riding on a dapple grey steed, for everything he came across he made to fit in with the things he had read of in the books of Knighthood.