arnival or
festival night. The mourners were so wrapped up and muffled in their
long robes that they could make no exertion; so that Don Quixote, with
entire safety, assailed them all, and, sorely against their will,
obliged them to quit the field; for they thought him no man, but the
devil from hell broke loose upon them to seize the dead body they were
conveying in the litter.

All this Sancho beheld with admiration at his master's intrepidity, and
said to himself: "This master of mine is certainly as valiant and
magnanimous as he pretends to be."

A burning torch lay upon the ground near the first whom the mule had
overthrown, by the light of which Don Quixote espied him, and going up
to him, placed the point of his spear to his throat, commanding him to
surrender, on pain of death. To which the fallen man answered: "I am
surrendered enough already, since I cannot stir, for one of my legs is
broken. I beseech you, sir, if you are a Christian gentleman, do not
kill me: you would commit a great sacrilege, for I am a licentiate and
have taken the lesser orders."

"Who the devil, then," said Don Quixote, "brought you hither, being an
ecclesiastic?"

"Who, sir?" replied the fallen man; "my evil fortune."

"A worse fate now threatens you," said Don Quixote, "unless you reply
satisfactorily to all my first questions."

"Your worship shall soon be satisfied," answered the licentiate; "and
therefore you must know, sir, that though I told you before I was a
licentiate, I am in fact only a bachelor of arts, and my name is Alonzo
Lopez. I am a native of Alcovendas, and came from the city of Baeza with
eleven more ecclesiastics, the same who fled with the torches. We were
attending the corpse in that litter to the city of Segovia. It is that
of a gentleman who died in Baeza, where he was deposited till now, that,
as I said before, we are carrying his bones to their place of burial in
Segovia, where he was born."

"And who killed him?" demanded Don Quixote.

"God," replied the bachelor, "by means of a pestilential fever."

"Then," said Don Quixote, "our Lord hath saved me the labor of revenging
his death, in case he had been slain by any other hand. But, since he
fell by the hand of Heaven, there is nothing expected from us but
patience and a silent shrug; for just the same must I have done had it
been His pleasure to pronounce the fatal sentence upon me. It is proper
that your reverence should know that I am a knight o