“God send it as He will,” answered Sancho; and helping him to rise, the Knight remounted Rozinante, whose shoulders were half dislocated.
Which treats of the lofty adventure and the rich winning of Mambrino’s helmet.
... Now, the truth of the matter as to the helmet, the horse, and the Knight that Don Quixote saw was this. There were in that neighbourhood two villages, one so small that it possessed neither apothecary’s shop nor barber, which the other, close to it, had; and so the barber of the larger village did duty for the smaller, in which was a sick man who required to be blooded, and another who wanted shaving; on which account the barber was coming, bringing with him a brass basin; and it chanced that, at the time he was travelling, it commenced to rain, and, not to spoil his hat, which was a new one, he clapt upon his head the basin, which, being a clean one, shone half a league off. He rode upon a grey ass, as Sancho said, and this was how to Don Quixote there appeared the dapple-grey steed and the Knight and the helmet of gold, for all things that he saw he made to fall in very easily with his wild chivalries and his vagabond fancies. And, when he perceived that luckless horseman draw near, without stopping to parley with him, he ran at him with his lance couched at Rozinante’s full gallop, with intent to pierce him through and through; and as he came up to him, without abating the fury of his career, he cried out—
“BEGAN TO RACE ACROSS THE PLAIN FASTER THAN THE WIND.”
“Defend thyself, vile caitiff creature, or render me up of thine own will that which by all right is my due.”
The barber, who saw that apparition bearing down upon him, without thought or apprehension of any such thing, had no other way to save himself from the thrust of the lance than to let himself fall off his ass, and no sooner had he touched the ground when he rose more nimbly than a deer, and began to race across the plain faster than the wind. The basin he left upon the ground, with which Don Quixote was well content, remarking that the Paynim had done wisely, and that he had imitated the beaver, who, when he finds himself hard pressed by the hunters, tears and cuts off with his teeth that for which he knows by natural instinct he is chased. He bade Sancho pick up the helmet, who, taking it in his hands, said—
“In sooth the basin is a good one, and worth a real of eight, if it is worth a maravedi.”
He gave it to his master, who placed it upon his head, turning it about from side to side in search of the vizor, and, not finding it, he said—
“Doubtless the Paynim to whose measure this famous headpiece was first forged, must have had a very large head, and the worst of it is that half of it is wanting.”