“Sir Rueful Countenance, your worship may as well sleep on as much as you like, without troubling yourself about killing any giant or restoring her kingdom to the princess; for that is all over and settled now.”

“I should think it was,” replied Don Quixote, “for I have had the most prodigious and stupendous battle with the giant that I ever remember having had all the days of my life; and with one backstroke⁠—swish!⁠—I brought his head tumbling to the ground, and so much blood gushed forth from him that it ran in rivulets over the earth like water.”

“Like red wine, your worship had better say,” replied Sancho; “for I would have you know, if you don’t know it, that the dead giant is a hacked wineskin, and the blood four-and-twenty gallons of red wine that it had in its belly, and the cut-off head is the bitch that bore me; and the devil take it all.”

“What art thou talking about, fool?” said Don Quixote; “art thou in thy senses?”