where he had
left it, he wandered from side to side looking for it. He came to the
place where the door used to be, and tried it with his hands, and turned
and twisted his eyes in every direction without saying a word; but after
a good while he asked his housekeeper whereabouts was the room that held
his books.

The housekeeper, who had been already well instructed in what she was to
answer, said, "What room or what nothing is it that your worship is
looking for? There are neither room nor books in this house now, for the
devil himself has carried all away."

"It was not the devil," said the niece, "but a magician who came on a
cloud one night after the day your worship left this, and dismounting
from a serpent that he rode he entered the room, and what he did there I
know not, but after a little while he made off, flying through the roof,
and left the house full of smoke; and when we went to see what he had
done we saw neither book nor room: but we remember very well, the
housekeeper and I, that on leaving, the old villain said in a loud voice
that, for a private grudge he owed the owner of the books and the room,
he had done mischief in that house that would be discovered by-and-by: he
said too that his name was the Sage Munaton."

"He must have said Friston," said Don Quixote.

"I don't know whether he called himself Friston or Friton," said the
housekeeper, "I only know that his name ended with 'ton.'"

"So it does," said Don Quixote, "and he is a sage magician, a great enemy
of mine, who has a spite against me because he knows by his arts and lore
that in process of time I am to engage in single combat with a knight
whom he befriends and that I am to conquer, and he will be unable to
prevent it; and for this reason he endeavours to do me all the ill turns
that he can; but I promise him it will be hard for him to oppose or avoid
what is decreed by Heaven."

"Who doubts that?" said the niece; "but, uncle, who mixes you up in these
quarrels? Would it not be better to remain at peace in your own house
instead of roaming the world looking for better bread than ever came of
wheat, never reflecting that many go for wool and come back shorn?"

"Oh, niece of mine," replied Don Quixote, "how much astray art thou in
thy reckoning: ere they shear me I shall have plucked away and stripped
off the beards of all who dare to touch only the tip of a hair of mine."

The two were unwilling to make any further answer, as they