me a packsaddle and not a caparison; but, ‘laws go,’ —I say no more; and indeed I am not drunk, for I am fasting, except it be from sin.”
The simple talk of the barber did not afford less amusement than the absurdities of Don Quixote, who now observed:
“There is no more to be done now than for each to take what belongs to him, and to whom God has given it, may St. Peter add his blessing.”
But said one of the four servants, “Unless, indeed, this is a deliberate joke, I cannot bring myself to believe that men so intelligent as those present are, or seem to be, can venture to declare and assert that this is not a basin, and that not a packsaddle; but as I perceive that they do assert and declare it, I can only come to the conclusion that there is some mystery in this persistence in what is so opposed to the evidence of experience and truth itself; for I swear by”—and here he rapped out a round oath—“all the people in the world will not make me believe that this is not a barber’s basin and that a jackass’s packsaddle.”
“It might easily be a she-ass’s,” observed the curate.
“It is all the same,” said the servant; “that is not the point; but whether it is or is not a packsaddle, as your worships say.”
On hearing this one of the newly arrived officers of the Brotherhood, who had been listening to the dispute and controversy, unable to restrain his anger and impatience, exclaimed, “It is a packsaddle as sure as my father is my father, and whoever has said or will say anything else must be drunk.”
“You lie like a rascally clown,” returned Don Quixote; and lifting his pike, which he had never let out of his hand, he delivered such a blow at his head that, had not the officer dodged it, it would have stretched him at full length. The pike was shivered in pieces against the ground, and the