doublets, with falling collars trimmed with Flemish bonelace, and ruffles of the same that served them for wristbands, with four fingers’ breadth of the arms exposed to make their hands look longer; in their hands they held rackets of fire; but what amazed me still more was that books, apparently full of wind and rubbish, served them for tennis balls, a strange and marvellous thing; this, however, did not astonish me so much as to observe that, although with players it is usual for the winners to be glad and the losers sorry, there in that game all were growling, all were snarling, and all were cursing one another.”
“That’s no wonder,” said Sancho; “for devils, whether playing or not, can never be content, win or lose.”
“Very likely,” said Altisidora; “but there is another thing that surprises me too, I mean surprised me then, and that was that no ball outlasted the first throw or was of any use a second time; and it was wonderful the constant succession there was of books, new and old. To one of them, a brand-new, well-bound one, they gave such a stroke that they knocked the guts out of it and scattered the leaves about. ‘Look what book that is,’ said one devil to another, and the other replied, ‘It is the Second Part of the History of Don Quixote of La Mancha , not by Cide Hamete, the original author, but by an Aragonese who by his own account is of Tordesillas.’ ‘Out of this with it,’ said the first, ‘and into the depths of hell with it out of my sight.’ ‘Is it so bad?’ said the other. ‘So bad is it,’ said the first, ‘that if I had set myself deliberately to make a worse, I could not have done it.’ They then went on with their game, knocking other books about; and I, having heard them mention the name of Don Quixote whom I love and adore so, took care to retain this vision in my memory.”
“A vision it must have been, no doubt,” said Don Quixote, “for there is no other I in the world; this history has been going about here for some time from hand to hand, but it does not stay long in any, for everybody