ch good
nature in him, hearing the poor prostrate man blustering in this style,
was unable to refrain from giving him an answer on his ribs; and coming
up to him he seized his lance, and having broken it in pieces, with one
of them he began so to belabour our Don Quixote that, notwithstanding and
in spite of his armour, he milled him like a measure of wheat. His
masters called out not to lay on so hard and to leave him alone, but the
muleteers blood was up, and he did not care to drop the game until he had
vented the rest of his wrath, and gathering up the remaining fragments of
the lance he finished with a discharge upon the unhappy victim, who all
through the storm of sticks that rained on him never ceased threatening
heaven, and earth, and the brigands, for such they seemed to him. At last
the muleteer was tired, and the traders continued their journey, taking
with them matter for talk about the poor fellow who had been cudgelled.
He when he found himself alone made another effort to rise; but if he was
unable when whole and sound, how was he to rise after having been
thrashed and well-nigh knocked to pieces? And yet he esteemed himself
fortunate, as it seemed to him that this was a regular knight-errant's
mishap, and entirely, he considered, the fault of his horse. However,
battered in body as he was, to rise was beyond his power.

CHAPTER V.

IN WHICH THE NARRATIVE OF OUR KNIGHT'S MISHAP IS CONTINUED

Finding, then, that, in fact he could not move, he thought himself of
having recourse to his usual remedy, which was to think of some passage
in his books, and his craze brought to his mind that about Baldwin and
the Marquis of Mantua, when Carloto left him wounded on the mountain
side, a story known by heart by the children, not forgotten by the young
men, and lauded and even believed by the old folk; and for all that not a
whit truer than the miracles of Mahomet. This seemed to him to fit
exactly the case in which he found himself, so, making a show of severe
suffering, he began to roll on the ground and with feeble breath repeat
the very words which the wounded knight of the wood is said to have
uttered:

Where art thou, lady mine, that thou
My sorrow dost not rue?
Thou canst not know it, lady mine,
Or else thou art untrue.

And so he went on with the ballad as far as the lines:

O noble Marquis of Mantua,
My Uncle and liege lord!

As chance would have it, when he had got to this line there