When they reached Don Quixote he was already out of bed, and was still shouting and raving, and slashing and cutting all round, as wide awake as if he had never slept.
They closed with him and by force got him back to bed, and when he had become a little calm, addressing the curate, he said to him, "Of a truth, Señor Archbishop Turpin,[1] it is a great disgrace for us who call ourselves the Twelve Peers, so carelessly to allow the knights of the Court to gain the victory in this tourney, we the adventurers having carried off the honor on the three former days."
"Hush, gossip," said the curate; "please God, the luck may turn, and what is lost to-day may be won to-morrow;[2] for the present let your worship have a care of your health, for it seems to me that you are over-fatigued, if not badly wounded."
"Wounded no," said Don Quixote, "but bruised and battered no doubt, for that bastard Don Roland has cudgelled me with the trunk of an oak tree, and all for envy, because he sees that I alone rival him in his achievements. But I should not call myself Reinaldos of Montalvan did he not pay me for it in spite of all his enchantments as soon as I rise from this bed. For the present let them bring me something to eat, for that, I feel, is what will be more to my purpose, and leave it to me to avenge myself."
They did as he wished; they gave him something to eat, and once more he fell asleep, leaving them marvelling at his madness.
That night the housekeeper burned to ashes all the books that were in the yard and in the whole house; and some must have been consumed that deserved preservation in everlasting archives, but their fate and the laziness of the examiner did not permit it, and so in them was verified the proverb that sometimes the innocent suffer for the guilty.[3]
One of the remedies which the curate and the barber immediately applied to their friend's disorder was to wall up and plaster the room where the books were, so that when he got up he should not find them (possibly the cause being re-
- ↑ Turpin (or Tilpin), Charlemagne's chaplain, and Archbishop of Rheims: according to the Chanson de Roland, one of those slain at Roncesvalles; but also claimed as author of the Chronicle of Charlemagne, which, however, was probably not composed before the end of the eleventh or beginning of the twelfth century. He died in the year of the Roncesvalles rout, 778.
- ↑ Prov. 188.
- ↑ Prov. 165.
