sore wants, he perceived not far
out of his road an inn, which was as welcome as a star guiding him to the
portals, if not the palaces, of his redemption; and quickening his pace
he reached it just as night was setting in. At the door were standing two
young women, girls of the district as they call them, on their way to
Seville with some carriers who had chanced to halt that night at the inn;
and as, happen what might to our adventurer, everything he saw or imaged
seemed to him to be and to happen after the fashion of what he read of,
the moment he saw the inn he pictured it to himself as a castle with its
four turrets and pinnacles of shining silver, not forgetting the
drawbridge and moat and all the belongings usually ascribed to castles of
the sort. To this inn, which to him seemed a castle, he advanced, and at
a short distance from it he checked Rocinante, hoping that some dwarf
would show himself upon the battlements, and by sound of trumpet give
notice that a knight was approaching the castle. But seeing that they
were slow about it, and that Rocinante was in a hurry to reach the
stable, he made for the inn door, and perceived the two gay damsels who
were standing there, and who seemed to him to be two fair maidens or
lovely ladies taking their ease at the castle gate.

At this moment it so happened that a swineherd who was going through the
stubbles collecting a drove of pigs (for, without any apology, that is
what they are called) gave a blast of his horn to bring them together,
and forthwith it seemed to Don Quixote to be what he was expecting, the
signal of some dwarf announcing his arrival; and so with prodigious
satisfaction he rode up to the inn and to the ladies, who, seeing a man
of this sort approaching in full armour and with lance and buckler, were
turning in dismay into the inn, when Don Quixote, guessing their fear by
their flight, raising his pasteboard visor, disclosed his dry dusty
visage, and with courteous bearing and gentle voice addressed them, "Your
ladyships need not fly or fear any rudeness, for that it belongs not to
the order of knighthood which I profess to offer to anyone, much less to
highborn maidens as your appearance proclaims you to be." The girls were
looking at him and straining their eyes to make out the features which
the clumsy visor obscured, but when they heard themselves called maidens,
a thing so much out of their line, they could not restrain their
laughter, which made Do