ore, and such
compassion did Sancho feel for him that he took out a real of four from
his bosom and gave it to him in alms.
Don Quixote went on and asked another what his crime was, and the man
answered with no less but rather much more sprightliness than the last
one.
"I am here because I carried the joke too far with a couple of cousins of
mine, and with a couple of other cousins who were none of mine; in short,
I carried the joke so far with them all that it ended in such a
complicated increase of kindred that no accountant could make it clear:
it was all proved against me, I got no favour, I had no money, I was near
having my neck stretched, they sentenced me to the galleys for six years,
I accepted my fate, it is the punishment of my fault; I am a young man;
let life only last, and with that all will come right. If you, sir, have
anything wherewith to help the poor, God will repay it to you in heaven,
and we on earth will take care in our petitions to him to pray for the
life and health of your worship, that they may be as long and as good as
your amiable appearance deserves."
This one was in the dress of a student, and one of the guards said he was
a great talker and a very elegant Latin scholar.
Behind all these there came a man of thirty, a very personable fellow,
except that when he looked, his eyes turned in a little one towards the
other. He was bound differently from the rest, for he had to his leg a
chain so long that it was wound all round his body, and two rings on his
neck, one attached to the chain, the other to what they call a
"keep-friend" or "friend's foot," from which hung two irons reaching to
his waist with two manacles fixed to them in which his hands were secured
by a big padlock, so that he could neither raise his hands to his mouth
nor lower his head to his hands. Don Quixote asked why this man carried
so many more chains than the others. The guard replied that it was
because he alone had committed more crimes than all the rest put
together, and was so daring and such a villain, that though they marched
him in that fashion they did not feel sure of him, but were in dread of
his making his escape.
"What crimes can he have committed," said Don Quixote, "if they have not
deserved a heavier punishment than being sent to the galleys?"
"He goes for ten years," replied the guard, "which is the same thing as
civil death, and all that need be said is that this good fellow is the
famous Gi
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