more assured him it was all
enchantment. For all that his simplicity never reached so high a pitch
that he could persuade himself it was not the plain and simple truth,
without any deception whatever about it, that he had been blanketed by
beings of flesh and blood, and not by visionary and imaginary phantoms,
as his master believed and protested.

The illustrious company had now been two days in the inn; and as it
seemed to them time to depart, they devised a plan so that, without
giving Dorothea and Don Fernando the trouble of going back with Don
Quixote to his village under pretence of restoring Queen Micomicona, the
curate and the barber might carry him away with them as they proposed,
and the curate be able to take his madness in hand at home; and in
pursuance of their plan they arranged with the owner of an oxcart who
happened to be passing that way to carry him after this fashion. They
constructed a kind of cage with wooden bars, large enough to hold Don
Quixote comfortably; and then Don Fernando and his companions, the
servants of Don Luis, and the officers of the Brotherhood, together with
the landlord, by the directions and advice of the curate, covered their
faces and disguised themselves, some in one way, some in another, so as
to appear to Don Quixote quite different from the persons he had seen in
the castle. This done, in profound silence they entered the room where he
was asleep, taking his his rest after the past frays, and advancing to
where he was sleeping tranquilly, not dreaming of anything of the kind
happening, they seized him firmly and bound him fast hand and foot, so
that, when he awoke startled, he was unable to move, and could only
marvel and wonder at the strange figures he saw before him; upon which he
at once gave way to the idea which his crazed fancy invariably conjured
up before him, and took it into his head that all these shapes were
phantoms of the enchanted castle, and that he himself was unquestionably
enchanted as he could neither move nor help himself; precisely what the
curate, the concoctor of the scheme, expected would happen. Of all that
were there Sancho was the only one who was at once in his senses and in
his own proper character, and he, though he was within very little of
sharing his master's infirmity, did not fail to perceive who all these
disguised figures were; but he did not dare to open his lips until he saw
what came of this assault and capture of his master; nor d