e Knight
of Phoebus, being caught in a certain pitfall, which opened under his
feet in a certain castle, on falling found himself bound hand and foot in
a deep pit underground, where they administered to him one of those
things they call clysters, of sand and snow-water, that well-nigh
finished him; and if he had not been succoured in that sore extremity by
a sage, a great friend of his, it would have gone very hard with the poor
knight; so I may well suffer in company with such worthy folk, for
greater were the indignities which they had to suffer than those which we
suffer. For I would have thee know, Sancho, that wounds caused by any
instruments which happen by chance to be in hand inflict no indignity,
and this is laid down in the law of the duel in express words: if, for
instance, the cobbler strikes another with the last which he has in his
hand, though it be in fact a piece of wood, it cannot be said for that
reason that he whom he struck with it has been cudgelled. I say this lest
thou shouldst imagine that because we have been drubbed in this affray we
have therefore suffered any indignity; for the arms those men carried,
with which they pounded us, were nothing more than their stakes, and not
one of them, so far as I remember, carried rapier, sword, or dagger."

"They gave me no time to see that much," answered Sancho, "for hardly had
I laid hand on my tizona when they signed the cross on my shoulders with
their sticks in such style that they took the sight out of my eyes and
the strength out of my feet, stretching me where I now lie, and where
thinking of whether all those stake-strokes were an indignity or not
gives me no uneasiness, which the pain of the blows does, for they will
remain as deeply impressed on my memory as on my shoulders."

"For all that let me tell thee, brother Panza," said Don Quixote, "that
there is no recollection which time does not put an end to, and no pain
which death does not remove."

"And what greater misfortune can there be," replied Panza, "than the one
that waits for time to put an end to it and death to remove it? If our
mishap were one of those that are cured with a couple of plasters, it
would not be so bad; but I am beginning to think that all the plasters in
a hospital almost won't be enough to put us right."

"No more of that: pluck strength out of weakness, Sancho, as I mean to
do," returned Don Quixote, "and let us see how Rocinante is, for it seems
to me that not