ay I
may be provoked with you it will be bad for the pitcher. The favours and
benefits that I have promised you will come in due time, and if they do
not your wages at least will not be lost, as I have already told you."

"All that your worship says is very well," said Sancho, "but I should
like to know (in case the time of favours should not come, and it might
be necessary to fall back upon wages) how much did the squire of a
knight-errant get in those days, and did they agree by the month, or by
the day like bricklayers?"

"I do not believe," replied Don Quixote, "that such squires were ever on
wages, but were dependent on favour; and if I have now mentioned thine in
the sealed will I have left at home, it was with a view to what may
happen; for as yet I know not how chivalry will turn out in these
wretched times of ours, and I do not wish my soul to suffer for trifles
in the other world; for I would have thee know, Sancho, that in this
there is no condition more hazardous than that of adventurers."

"That is true," said Sancho, "since the mere noise of the hammers of a
fulling mill can disturb and disquiet the heart of such a valiant errant
adventurer as your worship; but you may be sure I will not open my lips
henceforward to make light of anything of your worship's, but only to
honour you as my master and natural lord."

"By so doing," replied Don Quixote, "shalt thou live long on the face of
the earth; for next to parents, masters are to be respected as though
they were parents."

CHAPTER XXI.

WHICH TREATS OF THE EXALTED ADVENTURE AND RICH PRIZE OF MAMBRINO'S
HELMET, TOGETHER WITH OTHER THINGS THAT HAPPENED TO OUR INVINCIBLE KNIGHT

It now began to rain a little, and Sancho was for going into the fulling
mills, but Don Quixote had taken such an abhorrence to them on account of
the late joke that he would not enter them on any account; so turning
aside to right they came upon another road, different from that which
they had taken the night before. Shortly afterwards Don Quixote perceived
a man on horseback who wore on his head something that shone like gold,
and the moment he saw him he turned to Sancho and said:

"I think, Sancho, there is no proverb that is not true, all being maxims
drawn from experience itself, the mother of all the sciences, especially
that one that says, 'Where one door shuts, another opens.' I say so
because if last night fortune shut the door of the adventure we were
looki