cudgelled. I say this lest thou shouldst imagine that because we have been drubbed in this affray we have therefore suffered any indignity; for the arms those men carried, with which they pounded us, were nothing more than their stakes, and not one of them, so far as I remember, carried rapier, sword, or
“They gave me no time to see that much,” answered Sancho, “for hardly had I laid hand on my Tizona when they signed the cross on my shoulders with their sticks in such style that they took the sight out of my eyes and the strength out of my feet, stretching me where I now lie, and where thinking of whether all those stake-strokes were an indignity or not gives me no uneasiness, which the pain of the blows does, for they will remain as deeply impressed on my memory as on my shoulders.”
“For all that let me tell thee, brother Panza,” said Don Quixote, “that there is no recollection which time does not put an end to, and no pain which death does not remove.”
“And what greater misfortune can there be,” replied Panza, “than the one that waits for time to put an end to it and death to remove it? If our mishap were one of those that are cured with a couple of plasters, it would not be so bad; but I am beginning to think that all the plasters in a hospital almost won’t be enough to put us right.”
“No more of that: pluck strength out of weakness, Sancho, as I mean to do,” returned Don Quixote, “and let us see how Rocinante is, for it seems to me that not the least share of this mishap has fallen to the lot of the poor beast.”
“There is nothing wonderful in that,” replied Sancho, “since he is a knight-errant too; what I wonder at is that my beast should have come off scot-free where we come out scotched.”
“Fortune always leaves a door open in adversity in order to bring relief to it,” said Don Quixote; “I say so because this little beast may now supply