open with a
loud bang, and with the start the noise gave her Dona Rodriguez let the
candle fall from her hand, and the room was left as dark as a wolf's
mouth, as the saying is. Suddenly the poor duenna felt two hands seize
her by the throat, so tightly that she could not croak, while some one
else, without uttering a word, very briskly hoisted up her petticoats,
and with what seemed to be a slipper began to lay on so heartily that
anyone would have felt pity for her; but although Don Quixote felt it he
never stirred from his bed, but lay quiet and silent, nay apprehensive
that his turn for a drubbing might be coming. Nor was the apprehension an
idle one; one; for leaving the duenna (who did not dare to cry out) well
basted, the silent executioners fell upon Don Quixote, and stripping him
of the sheet and the coverlet, they pinched him so fast and so hard that
he was driven to defend himself with his fists, and all this in
marvellous silence. The battle lasted nearly half an hour, and then the
phantoms fled; Dona Rodriguez gathered up her skirts, and bemoaning her
fate went out without saying a word to Don Quixote, and he, sorely
pinched, puzzled, and dejected, remained alone, and there we will leave
him, wondering who could have been the perverse enchanter who had reduced
him to such a state; but that shall be told in due season, for Sancho
claims our attention, and the methodical arrangement of the story demands
it.

CHAPTER XLIX.

OF WHAT HAPPENED SANCHO IN MAKING THE ROUND OF HIS ISLAND

We left the great governor angered and irritated by that
portrait-painting rogue of a farmer who, instructed the majordomo, as the
majordomo was by the duke, tried to practise upon him; he however, fool,
boor, and clown as he was, held his own against them all, saying to those
round him and to Doctor Pedro Recio, who as soon as the private business
of the duke's letter was disposed of had returned to the room, "Now I see
plainly enough that judges and governors ought to be and must be made of
brass not to feel the importunities of the applicants that at all times
and all seasons insist on being heard, and having their business
despatched, and their own affairs and no others attended to, come what
may; and if the poor judge does not hear them and settle the
matter--either because he cannot or because that is not the time set
apart for hearing them-forthwith they abuse him, and run him down, and
gnaw at his bones, and even