‘What is that you say—sent?’ asked Don Quixote. ‘Can any king send his subjects where they have no mind to go?’
‘They are men who have been guilty of many crimes,’ replied the squire, ‘and to punish them they are being led by force to the galleys.’
‘They go,’ inquired Don Quixote, ‘by force and not willingly?’
‘You speak truly,’ answered Sancho Panza.
‘Then if that is so,’ said the knight, ‘it is my duty to set them free.’
‘But think a moment, your worship,’ cried Sancho, terrified at the consequences of this new idea; ‘they are bad men, and deserve punishment for the crimes they have committed.’
Don Quixote was silent. In fact, he had heard nothing of what his squire had said. Instead he rode up to the galley-slaves, who by this time were quite near, and politely begged one of the soldiers who had charge of them to tell him of his courtesy where these people were going, and why they were chained in such a manner.
The guard, who had never read any of the romances of chivalry, and was quite ignorant of the speech of knights, answered roughly that they were felons going to the galleys, and that was all that mattered to anybody. But Don Quixote was not to be put aside like this.
‘By your leave,’ he said, ‘I would speak with them, and ask of every man the reason of his misfortune.’
Now this civility of the knight made the soldiers feel ashamed of their own rudeness, so one of them replied more gently than before: