and in the Catalan tongue bade them stand and
wait until their captain came up. Don Quixote was on foot with his horse
unbridled and his lance leaning against a tree, and in short completely
defenceless; he thought it best therefore to fold his arms and bow his
head and reserve himself for a more favourable occasion and opportunity.
The robbers made haste to search Dapple, and did not leave him a single
thing of all he carried in the alforjas and in the valise; and lucky it
was for Sancho that the duke's crowns and those he brought from home were
in a girdle that he wore round him; but for all that these good folk
would have stripped him, and even looked to see what he had hidden
between the skin and flesh, but for the arrival at that moment of their
captain, who was about thirty-four years of age apparently, strongly
built, above the middle height, of stern aspect and swarthy complexion.
He was mounted upon a powerful horse, and had on a coat of mail, with
four of the pistols they call petronels in that country at his waist. He
saw that his squires (for so they call those who follow that trade) were
about to rifle Sancho Panza, but he ordered them to desist and was at
once obeyed, so the girdle escaped. He wondered to see the lance leaning
against the tree, the shield on the ground, and Don Quixote in armour and
dejected, with the saddest and most melancholy face that sadness itself
could produce; and going up to him he said, "Be not so cast down, good
man, for you have not fallen into the hands of any inhuman Busiris, but
into Roque Guinart's, which are more merciful than cruel."

"The cause of my dejection," returned Don Quixote, "is not that I have
fallen into thy hands, O valiant Roque, whose fame is bounded by no
limits on earth, but that my carelessness should have been so great that
thy soldiers should have caught me unbridled, when it is my duty,
according to the rule of knight-errantry which I profess, to be always on
the alert and at all times my own sentinel; for let me tell thee, great
Roque, had they found me on my horse, with my lance and shield, it would
not have been very easy for them to reduce me to submission, for I am Don
Quixote of La Mancha, he who hath filled the whole world with his
achievements."

Roque Guinart at once perceived that Don Quixote's weakness was more akin
to madness than to swagger; and though he had sometimes heard him spoken
of, he never regarded the things attributed to him a