head to foot, and her shoulders, which overweighted her somewhat, made
her contemplate the ground more than she liked. This graceful lass, then,
helped the young girl, and the two made up a very bad bed for Don Quixote
in a garret that showed evident signs of having formerly served for many
years as a straw-loft, in which there was also quartered a carrier whose
bed was placed a little beyond our Don Quixote's, and, though only made
of the pack-saddles and cloths of his mules, had much the advantage of
it, as Don Quixote's consisted simply of four rough boards on two not
very even trestles, a mattress, that for thinness might have passed for a
quilt, full of pellets which, were they not seen through the rents to be
wool, would to the touch have seemed pebbles in hardness, two sheets made
of buckler leather, and a coverlet the threads of which anyone that chose
might have counted without missing one in the reckoning.

On this accursed bed Don Quixote stretched himself, and the hostess and
her daughter soon covered him with plasters from top to toe, while
Maritornes--for that was the name of the Asturian--held the light for
them, and while plastering him, the hostess, observing how full of wheals
Don Quixote was in some places, remarked that this had more the look of
blows than of a fall.

It was not blows, Sancho said, but that the rock had many points and
projections, and that each of them had left its mark. "Pray, senora," he
added, "manage to save some tow, as there will be no want of some one to
use it, for my loins too are rather sore."

"Then you must have fallen too," said the hostess.

"I did not fall," said Sancho Panza, "but from the shock I got at seeing
my master fall, my body aches so that I feel as if I had had a thousand