proving things that, after they are known and proved, are not worth a farthing to the understanding or memory.”
In this and other pleasant conversation the day went by, and that night they put up at a small hamlet whence it was not more than two leagues to the cave of Montesinos, so the cousin told Don Quixote, adding, that if he was bent upon entering it, it would be requisite for him to provide himself with ropes, so that he might be tied and lowered into its depths. Don Quixote said that even if it reached to the bottomless pit he meant to see where it went to; so they bought about a hundred fathoms of rope, and next day at two in the afternoon they arrived at the cave, the mouth of which is spacious and wide, but full of thorn and wild-fig bushes and brambles and briars, so thick and matted that they completely close it up and cover it over.
On coming within sight of it the cousin, Sancho, and Don Quixote dismounted, and the first two immediately tied the latter very firmly with the ropes, and as they were girding and swathing him Sancho said to him, “Mind what you are about, master mine; don’t go burying yourself alive, or putting yourself where you’ll be like a bottle put to cool in a well; it’s no affair or business of your worship’s to become the explorer of this, which must be worse than a Moorish dungeon.”
“Tie me and hold thy peace,” said Don Quixote, “for an emprise like this, friend Sancho, was reserved for me;” and said the guide, “I beg of you, Señor Don Quixote, to observe carefully and examine with a hundred eyes everything that is within there; perhaps there may be some things for me to put into my book of transformations.”
“The drum is in hands that will know how to beat it well enough,” said Sancho Panza.
When he had said this and finished the tying (which was not over the armour but only over the doublet) Don Quixote observed, “It was