e.

MAMBRINO'S HELMET

Rain fell in gentle drops, and Sancho was for going into the fulling
mills,[441-1] but Don Quixote had taken such a disgust to them on
account of the late joke that he would not enter them on any account; so
turning aside to the right they came upon another road, different from
that which they had taken the night before. Shortly afterwards Don
Quixote perceived a man on horseback who wore on his head something that
shone like gold, and the moment he saw him he turned to Sancho and said,
"I think, Sancho, there is no proverb that is not true, all being maxims
drawn from experience itself, the mother of all sciences, especially
that one that says, 'Where one door shuts, another opens.' I say so
because if last night fortune shut the door of the adventure we were
looking for against us, cheating us with the fulling mills, it now opens
wide another one for better and more certain adventure, and if I do not
contrive to enter it, it will be my own fault, and I cannot lay it to my
ignorance of fulling mills, or the darkness of the night. I say this
because, if I mistake not, there comes toward us one who wears on his
head the helmet of Mambrino,[442-2] concerning which I took the oath
thou rememberest."

"Mind what you say, your worship, and still more what you do," said
Sancho, "for I don't want any more fulling mills to finish off fulling
and knocking our senses out."

"The devil take thee, man," said Don Quixote; "what has a helmet to do
with fulling mills?"

"I don't know," replied Sancho, "but, faith, if I might speak as I used,
perhaps I could give such reasons that your worship would see you were
mistaken in what you say."

"How can I be mistaken in what I say, unbelieving traitor?" returned Don
Quixote. "Tell me, seest thou not yonder knight coming towards us on a
dappled gray steed, who has upon his head a helmet of gold?"

"What I see and make out," answered Sancho, "is only a man on a gray ass
like my own, who has something that shines on his head."

"Well, that is the helmet of Mambrino," said Don Quixote; "stand to one
side and leave me alone with him; thou shalt see how, without saying a
word, I shall bring this adventure to an issue and possess myself of the
helmet I have so longed for."

"I will take care to stand aside," said Sancho; "but God grant, I say
once more, that it may not be fulling mills again."

"I have told thee, brother, on no account to mention those fulling