honour 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; 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 the innocent suffer for the guilty.

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 removed the effect might cease), and they might say that a
magician had carried them off, room and all; and this was done with all