eeping little, he lost the use of his
reason. His brain was full of nothing but enchantments, quarrels,
battles, challenges, wounds, amorous plaints, torments, and abundance of
impossible follies.

Having lost his wits, he stumbled on the oddest fancy that ever entered
madman's brain--to turn knight-errant, mount his steed, and, armed
_cap-a-pie_, ride through the world, redressing all manner of
grievances, and exposing himself to every danger, that he might purchase
everlasting honour and renown.

The first thing he did was to secure a suit of armour that had belonged
to his great-grandfather. Then he made himself a helmet, which his sword
demolished at the first stroke. After repairing this mischief, he went
to visit his horse, whose bones stuck out, but who appeared to his
master a finer beast than Alexander's Bucephalus. After four days of
thought, he decided to call his horse Rozinante, and when the title was
decided upon, he spent eight days more before he arrived at Don Quixote
as a name for himself.

And now he perceived that nothing was wanting save only a lady, on whom
he might bestow the empire of his heart. There lived close at hand a
hard-working country lass, Aldonza Lorenzo, on whom sometimes he had
cast an eye, but who was quite unmindful of the gentleman. Her he
selected for his peerless lady, and dubbed her with the sweet-sounding
name of Dulcinea del Toboso.

_II.--An Adventure in a Courtyard_

One morning, in the hottest part of July, with great secrecy, he armed
himself, mounted Rozinante, and rode out of his backyard into the open
fields. He was disturbed to think that the honour of knighthood had not
yet been conferred upon him, but determined to rectify this matter at an
early opportunity, and rode on soliloquising, after the manner of
knight-errants, as happy as a man might be.

Towards evening he arrived at a common inn, before whose door sat two
wenches, the companions of some carriers bound for Seville. Don Quixote
instantly imagined the inn to be a castle, and the wenches to be fair
ladies taking the air; and as a swine-herd, getting his hogs together in
a stubble-field near at hand, chanced at that moment to wind his horn,
our gentleman imagined that this was a signal of his approach, and rode
forward in the highest spirits.

The extravagant language in which he addressed them astonished the
wenches as much as his amazing appearance, and they first would have run
from him, but