t 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 as true, nor could he
persuade himself that such a humour could become dominant in the heart of
man; he was extremely glad, therefore, to meet him and test at close
quarters what he had heard of him at a distance; so he said to him,
"Despair not, valiant knight, nor regard as an untoward fate the position
in which thou findest thyself; it may be that by these slips thy crooked
fortune will make itself straight; for heaven by strange circuitous ways,
mysterious and incomprehensible to man, raises up the fallen and makes
rich the poor."

Don Quixote was about to thank him, when they heard behind them a noise
as of a troop of horses; there was, however, but one, riding on which at
a furious pace came a youth, apparently about twenty yea