r
worship, and they must have put that nastiness there in order to provoke
your patience to anger, and make you baste my ribs as you are wont to
do. Well, this time, indeed, they have missed their aim, for I trust to
my master's good sense to see that I have got no curds or milk, or
anything of the sort; and that if I had, it is in my stomach I would put
it and not in the helmet."

"May be so," said Don Quixote. All this the gentleman was observing, and
with astonishment, more especially when, after having wiped himself
clean, his head, face, beard, and helmet, Don Quixote put it on, and
settling himself firmly in his stirrups, easing his sword in the
scabbard, and grasping his lance, he cried, "Now come who will, here am
I, ready to try conclusions with Satan himself in person!"

By this time the cart with the flags had come up, unattended by any one
except the carter on a mule, and a man sitting in front. Don Quixote
planted himself before it and said, "Whither are you going, brothers?
What cart is this? What have you got in it? What flags are those?"

To this the carter replied, "The cart is mine; what is in it is a pair
of fine caged lions, which the governor of Oran is sending to court as a
present to his Majesty; and the flags are our lord the King's, to show
that what is here is his property."

"And are the lions large?" asked Don Quixote.

"So large," replied the man who sat at the door of the cart, "that
larger, or as large, have never crossed from Africa to Spain; I am the
keeper, and I have brought over others, but never any like these. They
are male and female; the male is in that first cage and the female in
the one behind, and they are hungry now, for they have eaten nothing
to-day, so let your worship stand aside, for we must make haste to the
place where we are to feed them."

Hereupon, smiling slightly, Don Quixote exclaimed, "Lion-whelps to me!
to me whelps of lions, and at such a time! Then, by God! those gentlemen
who send them here shall see if I am a man to be frightened by lions.
Get down, my good fellow, and as you are the keeper open the cages, and
turn me out those beasts, and in the midst of this plain I will let them
know who Don Quixote of La Mancha is, in spite and in the teeth of the
enchanters who send them to me."

"So, so," said the gentleman to himself at this; "our worthy knight has
shown of what sort he is; the curds, no doubt, have softened his skull
and brought his brains t