can help giving heat, or those of the moon moisture; pardon me,
therefore, and proceed, for that is more to the purpose now."

While Don Quixote was saying this, Cardenio allowed his head to fall upon
his breast, and seemed plunged in deep thought; and though twice Don
Quixote bade him go on with his story, he neither looked up nor uttered a
word in reply; but after some time he raised his head and said, "I cannot
get rid of the idea, nor will anyone in the world remove it, or make me
think otherwise--and he would be a blockhead who would hold or believe
anything else than that that arrant knave Master Elisabad made free with
Queen Madasima."

"That is not true, by all that's good," said Don Quixote in high wrath,
turning upon him angrily, as his way was; "and it is a very great
slander, or rather villainy. Queen Madasima was a very illustrious lady,
and it is not to be supposed that so exalted a princess would have made
free with a quack; and whoever maintains the contrary lies like a great
scoundrel, and I will give him to know it, on foot or on horseback, armed
or unarmed, by night or by day, or as he likes best."

Cardenio was looking at him steadily, and his mad fit having now come
upon him, he had no disposition to go on with his story, nor would Don
Quixote have listened to it, so much had what he had heard about Madasima
disgusted him. Strange to say, he stood up for her as if she were in
earnest his veritable born lady; to such a pass had his unholy books
brought him. Cardenio, then, being, as I said, now mad, when he heard
himself given the lie, and called a scoundrel and other insulting names,
not relishing the jest, snatched up a stone that he found near him, and
with it delivered such a blow on Don Quixote's breast that he laid him on
his back. Sancho Panza, seeing his master treated in this fashion,
attacked the madman with his closed fist; but the Ragged One received him
in such a way that with a blow of his fist he stretched him at his feet,
and then mounting upon him crushed his ribs to his own satisfaction; the
goatherd, who came to the rescue, shared the same fate; and having beaten
and pummelled them all he left them and quietly withdrew to his
hiding-place on the mountain. Sancho rose, and with the rage he felt at
finding himself so belaboured without deserving it, ran to take vengeance
on the goatherd, accusing him of not giving them warning that this man
was at times taken with a mad fit, for if