‘And long before your return,’ cried Maritornes, ‘my poor master will be in another world’; but Don Quixote, not heeding her, turned his back, and, falling on his knees before a lady present, begged that she would grant him permission to rescue the lord of the castle.
This being given, the knight braced on his shield and drew his sword, and hastened to the inn door, where the two men were still beating the landlord. But the moment he reached the combatants he stopped and drew back, in spite of the entreaties of Maritornes and of the innkeeper’s wife.
‘It has come into my mind,’ he said, ‘that it is not lawful for me to give battle to any except belted knights. Now there are no knights here, and the task belongs to my squire Sancho, who I will bid to undertake it in my stead.’
So the fight still raged, till at length the men’s arms grew tired, which, Don Quixote seeing, he persuaded them to make peace, and the two guests to pay the sum which they rightly owed the landlord.
DON QUIXOTE’S HOME-COMING
By this time the company of friends who had been passing their days so pleasantly at the inn, were called away by other business, but, not liking to leave Don Quixote to himself, they contrived a plan by which the priest and barber were to carry him home, where they hoped his wits might come back to him.
So they set about making secretly a large cage of poles, having the sides latticed, so that Don Quixote should receive both air and light, and this cage was to be placed on a bullock-cart which happened to be going in the same direction. The rest of the company put on masks and disguised themselves in various manners, so that the knight might not know them again.
These preparations being finished, they stole softly into his room at the dead of night and tied his hands and feet firmly together. He woke with a start, and, seeing the array of strange figures about him, took them to be the phantoms which hovered about the enchanted castle, and believed without doubt that he himself was enchanted likewise, for he could neither move nor fight.