such absurd phrases together, while
the hot sun rose and grew hotter, until it would have melted his
brains in his helmet, if he had any. He traveled nearly all day
without seeing anything remarkable, at which he was in despair, for he
could hardly wait, as we have said, for his adventures to begin.

Toward evening he came in sight of a common wayside inn, and standing at
the door were two peasant girls who looked with astonishment on the
strange figure that was approaching them. To the disordered imagination
of Don Quixote, this appeared to be a castle with four towers, and the
girls who stood in front of the door seemed ladies of noble birth and
peerless beauty. He seemed to see behind them a drawbridge and a moat,
and waited for some dwarf to appear upon the castle battlements and by
sound of a trumpet announce that a knight was approaching the gates.

At this point a swineherd who was gathering his pigs did happen to
blow a blast on his horn to scare his charges along the road; and
this, appearing to Don Quixote to be the dwarfs signal that he had
expected, he drew near in high satisfaction, while Rocinante, scenting
stables and hay and water, pricked up his ears and advanced at a brisk
trot until the inn door was reached and Don Quixote addressed the
astonished girls who were waiting there.

The girls, on seeing an armed man approaching them, had turned to seek
safety indoors, when Don Quixote, lifting his pasteboard beaver, said
to them in the most courteous manner he could command:

"Ladies, I beseech you, do not fly or fear any manner of rudeness, for
it is against the rules of the knighthood, which I profess, to offer
harm to high-born ladies such as you appear to be."

The girls, hearing themselves addressed in this strange manner and
called ladies, could not refrain from giggling, at which Don Quixote
rebuked them, saying:

"Modesty becomes the fair, and laughter without cause is the greatest
silliness."

The strange language and dilapidated appearance of the speaker only
increased the girls' laughter, and that increased Don Quixote's
irritation; and matters might have gone farther if the landlord had
not appeared at this moment to see what might be the matter. When he
beheld the grotesque figure on horseback whose armor did not match and
whose mount was the sorriest one imaginable, it was all he could do to
refrain from joining the girls in their hilarity; but being a little
in awe of the strange kn