pt down by
the weight of his armor and lay plunging and kicking on his back, but
ceased not for a moment to hurl threats and defiances at his laughing
foes. "Fly not, ye cowards, ye dastards! Wait awhile! Tis not by my
fault, but by the fault of my horse that I lie prostrate here."

One of the mule-drivers, who was somewhat hot-tempered, was so provoked
by the haughty language of the poor fallen knight, that he resolved to
give him the answer on his ribs, and running up he snatched the lance
from Don Quixote's hands, broke it in pieces, and taking one of them
began to beat him with such good-will that in spite of the armor he
bruised him like wheat in a mill-hopper. And he found the exercise so
much to his liking that he continued it until he had shivered every
fragment of the broken lance into splinters. Nevertheless he could not
stop the mouth of our valiant knight, who during all that tempest of
blows went on defying heaven and earth and shouting menaces against
those bandits, as he now supposed them to be.

At length the mule-driver grew weary, and the whole party rode off,
leaving the battered champion on the ground. When they were gone he made
another attempt to rise. But if he failed when he was sound and whole,
how much less could he do it now that he was almost hammered to pieces!
Notwithstanding, his heart was light and gay, for in his own fancy he
was a hero of romance, lying covered with wounds on honor's field.

VI. THE RETURN HOME

Two days had passed since Don Quixote left his home, and his niece and
his housekeeper were growing very anxious about him. More than once they
had heard him declare his intention to turn knight-errant, and they
began to fear that he had carried out his mad design. On the evening of
the second day, a few hours after he had been so roughly handled by the
muleteer, they heard a loud voice calling outside the street door: "Open
to Sir Baldwin and the Lord Marquis of Mantua, who is brought to your
gates grievously wounded." They made haste to unbar the door, and when
it was opened they saw a strange sight: mounted on an ass, whose head
was held by a laboring man of the village, sat Don Quixote, huddled
together in a most uncavalier-like posture, his armor all battered and
his face begrimed with dirt. Hard by stood Rozinante, a woeful object,
crooking his knees and drooping his head; and tied in a bundle on his
back were the splintered fragments of Don Quixote's lance.

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