When Don Quixote saw himself caged and hoisted on the cart in this way, he said, 'Many grave histories of knights-errant have I read; but never yet have I read, seen, or heard of their carrying off enchanted knights-errant in this fashion, or at the slow pace that these lazy, sluggish animals promise; for they always take them away through the air with marvellous swiftness, enveloped in a dark thick cloud, or on a chariot of fire, or it may be on some hippogriff or other beast of the kind; but to carry me off like this on an ox-cart!
By God, it puzzles me!
But perhaps the chivalry and enchantments of our day take a different course from that of those in days gone by; and it may be, too, that as I am a new knight in the world, and the first to revive the already forgotten calling of knight-adventurers, they may have newly invented other kinds of enchantments and other modes of carrying off the enchanted.
What thinkest thou of the matter, Sancho my son? ' 'I don’t know what to think,' answered Sancho, 'not being as well read as your worship in errant writings; but for all that I venture to say and swear that these apparitions that are about us are not quite catholic.
' 'Catholic! ' said Don Quixote. 'Father of me! how can they be Catholic when they are all devils that have taken fantastic shapes to come and do this, and bring me to this condition?
And if thou wouldst prove it, touch them, and feel them, and thou wilt find they have only bodies of air, and no consistency except in appearance. ' 'By God, master,' returned Sancho, 'I have touched them already; and that devil, that goes about there so busily, has firm flesh,