But Maritornes, pitying a creature in such tribulation and thinking he had danced and tumbled enough to be dry, was so generous as to help him to a draught of water, which she purposely drew from the well that moment, that it might be the cooler.  Sancho clapped the pot to his mouth, but his master made him desist.  “Hold, hold,” cried he, “son Sancho, drink no water, child, it will kill thee; behold I have here the most holy balsam, two drops of which will cure thee effectually.”—­“Ha,” replied Sancho, shaking his head, and looking sourly on the knight with a side face, “have you again forgot that I am no knight?  Keep your brewings for yourself, in the devil’s name, and let me alone.”  With that he lifted up the jug to his nose, but finding it to be mere element, he spirted out again the little he had tasted, and desired the wench to help him to some better liquor; so she went and fetched him wine to make him amends, and paid for it too out of her own pocket.  As soon as Sancho had tipped off his wine, he visited his ass’s ribs twice or thrice with his heels, and, free egress being granted him, he trooped off, well content with the thoughts of having had his ends, and got off scot free, though at the expense of his shoulders, his usual sureties.  It is true, the innkeeper kept his wallet for the reckoning; but the poor squire was so dismayed, and in such haste to be gone, that he never missed it.  The host was for shutting the inn doors after him, for fear of the worst; but the tossers would not let him, being a sort of fellows that would not have cared for Don Quixote a straw, though he had really been one of the Knights of the Round Table.

THE BATTLE OF THE SHEEP

By Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

They went on discoursing, when Don Quixote, perceiving a thick cloud of dust arise right before them in the road, “The day is come,” said he, turning to his squire, “the day is come, Sancho, that shall usher in the happiness which fortune has reserved for me; this day shall the strength of my arm be signalized by such exploits as shall be transmitted even to the latest posterity.  Seest thou that cloud of dust, Sancho?  It is raised by a prodigious army marching this way, and composed of an infinite number of nations.”—­“Why then, at this rate,” quoth Sancho, “there should be two armies; for yonder is as great a dust on the other side.”  With that Don Quixote looked, and was transported with joy at the sight, firmly believing that two vast armies were ready to engage each other in that plain; for his imagination was so crowded with those battles, enchantments, surprising adventures, amorous thoughts, and other whimsies which he had read of in romances, that his strong fancy changed everything he saw into what he desired to see; and thus he could not conceive that the dust was only raised by two large flocks of sheep that were going the same road from different parts, and could not be discerned till they were very near; he was