ery spot, or thereabouts, until the squire returned from El
Toboso; and he told him also to cut some branches and strew them in
his path. Furthermore he said he would be on the lookout for him from
the peak of the highest cliff.

When Sancho finally took leave of his master, he felt that he could
swear with unprotesting conscience that his beloved master was quite
mad.

CHAPTER XXVI

IN WHICH ARE CONTINUED THE REFINEMENTS WHEREWITH DON QUIXOTE
PLAYED THE PART OF A LOVER IN THE SIERRA MORENA

Soon after Sancho had gone, Don Quixote came to the conclusion that
the exercises he was putting himself through were much too hard and
troublesome. So he decided to change them, and instead of imitating
Roland and his fury, he turned to the more melancholy Amadis, whose
madness was of a much milder form and needed a less strenuous outlet.
But to imitate Amadis, he had to have a rosary, and he had none. For a
moment he was in a quandary; but a miracle gave him the inspiration to
use the tail of his shirt--which was too long anyhow--and tearing off
a long piece, on which he made eleven knots, he repeated quantities of
credos and ave-marias on it, there in the wilderness. His love would
at times drive him to write verses to his cruel and beloved one on the
bark of the trees, all the while he would make moaning sounds of
lovesickness. Again he would go about sighing, singing, calling to the
nymphs and fauns and satyrs, and, of course, looking for herbs to
nourish himself with.

But while Don Quixote exiled himself in the wilds, his servant Sancho
Panza was making for El Toboso. On the second day he found himself at
the inn at which the incident of his blanket journey had taken place.
The smell of food reminded him that it was dinner time; yet he
hesitated about entering. As he was standing there, along came two
men; and one of them was heard to say: "Is not that Sancho Panza?" "So
it is," said the other one; and it turned out to be the curate and the
barber of Don Quixote's own village.

At once they approached him. They asked him about his master, but it
was not until they had threatened to believe that he had robbed and
murdered Don Quixote--for was he not mounted on Rocinante?--that he
divulged the secret of his master's hiding-place. He told them of
everything; even about his master's strange and unbounded love for the
daughter of Lorenzo Corchuelo and the letter he had written to her.
When the curate asked to see i