experienced a moment of perfect reconciliation to the landscape as
really wearing the face of that La Mancha familiar to my boyish vision.
Late in the forenoon, but early enough to save the face of La Mancha,
there appeared certain unquestionable shapes in the nearer and farther
distance which I joyously knew for those windmills which Don Quixote had
known for giants and spurred at, lance in rest. They were waving their
vans in what he had found insolent defiance, but which seemed to us glad
welcome, as of windmills waiting that long time for a reader of
Cervantes who could enter into their feelings and into the friendly
companionship they were offering.




II


Our train did not pass very near, but the distance was not bad for them;
it kept them sixty or sixty-five years back in the past where they
belonged, and in its dimness I could the more distinctly see Don Quixote
careering against them, and Sancho Panza vainly warning, vainly
imploring him, and then in his rage and despair, "giving himself to the
devil," as he had so often to do in that master's service; I do not know
now that I would have gone nearer them if I could. Sometimes in the
desolate plains where the windmills stood so well aloof men were lazily,
or at least leisurely, plowing with their prehistoric crooked sticks.
Here and there the clean levels were broken by shallow pools of water;
and we were at first much tormented by expanses, almost as great as
these pools, of a certain purple flower, which no curiosity of ours
could prevail with to yield up the secret of its name or nature. It was