All being now ready, one morning Don Quixote got up before daylight, and without saying a word to anybody, put on his armor, took his sword, and spear, and shield, saddled “Rozinante,” and started on his search for adventures.

But before he had gone very far, a dreadful thought struck him.  He had not been knighted!  Moreover, he had read in his books that until a knight had done some great deed, he must wear white armor, and be without any device or coat of arms on his shield.  What was to be done?  He was so staggered by this thought that he almost felt that he must turn back.  But then he remembered that he had read how adventurers were sometimes knighted by persons whom they happened to meet on the road.  And as to his armor, why, he thought he might scour and polish that till nothing could be whiter.  So he rode on, letting “Rozinante” take which road he pleased, that being, he supposed, as good a way as any of looking for adventures.

All day he rode, to his sorrow without finding anything worth calling an adventure.

At last as evening began to fall, and when he and his horse were both very weary, they came in sight of an inn.  Don Quixote no sooner saw the inn than he fancied it to be a great castle, and he halted at some distance from it, expecting that, as in days of old, a dwarf would certainly appear on the battlements, and, by sounding a trumpet, give notice of the arrival of a knight.  But no dwarf appeared, and as “Rozinante” showed great haste to reach the stable, Don Quixote began to move towards the inn.

At this moment it happened that a swineherd in a field near at hand sounded his horn to bring his herd of pigs home to be fed.  Don Quixote, imagining that this must be the dwarf at last giving notice of his coming, rode quickly up to the inn door, beside which it chanced that there stood two very impudent young women, whom the Knight imagined to be two beautiful ladies taking the air at the castle gate.

Astonished at the sight of so strange a figure, and a little frightened, the girls turned to run away.  But Don Quixote stopped them.

“I beseech ye, ladies, do not fly,” he said.  “I will harm no one, least of all maidens of rank so high as yours.”

And much more he said, whereat the young women laughed so loud and so long that Don Quixote became very angry, and there is no saying what he might not have done had not the innkeeper at that moment come out.  This innkeeper was very fat and good-natured, and anxious not to offend anybody, but even he could hardly help laughing when he saw Don Quixote.  However, he very civilly asked the Knight to dismount and offered him everything that the inn could provide.

Don Quixote being by this time both tired and hungry, with some difficulty got off his horse and handed it to the innkeeper (to whom he spoke as governor of the castle), asking him to take the greatest care of “Rozinante,” for in the whole world there was no better steed.