III.—­The Immortal Partnership

So it came to pass that one night Don Quixote stole away from his home, and Sancho Panza from his wife and children, and with the master on Rozinante, the servant on his ass, Dapple, hastened away under cover of darkness in search of adventures.  As they travelled, “I beseech your worship,” quoth Sancho, “be sure you forget not your promise of the island; for, I dare swear, I shall make shift to govern it, let it be never so big.”  The knight, in a rhapsody, foreshadowed the day when Sancho might be made even a king, for in romances of chivalry there is no limit to the gifts made by valorous knights to their faithful squires.  But Sancho shook his head.  “Though it rain kingdoms on the face of the earth, not one of them would fit well upon the head of my wife; for, I must needs tell you, she is not worth two brass-jacks to make a queen of.”

As they were thus discoursing they espied some thirty windmills in the plain, which Don Quixote instantly took for giants.  Nothing that Sancho said could dissuade him, and he must needs clap spurs to his horse and ride a-tilt at these great windmills, recommending himself to his lady Dulcinea.  As he ran his lance into the sail of the first mill, the wind whirled about with such swiftness that the motion broke the lance into shivers, and hurled away both knight and horse along with it.  When Sancho came upon his master the Don explained that some cursed necromancer had converted those giants into windmills to deprive him of the honour of victory.

When the knight was recovered they continued their way, and their next adventure was to meet two monks on mules riding before a coach, with four or five men on horseback, wherein sat a lady going to Seville to meet her husband.  Don Quixote rode forward, addressed the monks as “cursed implements of hell,” and bade them instantly release the lovely princess in the coach.  The monks flew for their lives as Don Quixote charged down upon them, but Sancho was thrown down by the servants, who tore his beard, trampled his stomach, beat and mauled him in every part of his body, and then left him sprawling without breath or motion.

As for Don Quixote, he came off victor in this conflict, and only desisted from slaying his assailant on the plea of the lady in the coach, and on her promise that the conquered man should present himself before the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso.  The recovered Sancho was surprised to find that his master had no island to bestow upon him after this incredible victory, wherein he himself had suffered so disastrously.

In a fierce encounter with some Yanguesian carriers, Don Quixote was wounded almost to death, and he explained to Sancho that his defeat he owed to fighting with common people, bidding Sancho in future to fight himself against such common fellows.

“Sir,” said Sancho, “I am a peaceful man, a quiet fellow, do you see; I can make shift to forgive injuries as well as any man, as having a wife to maintain, and children to bring up.  I freely forgive all mankind, high and low, lords and beggars, whatsoever wrongs they ever did or may do me, without the least exception.”