DON QUIXOTE

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words that neither bound him nor dismissed us. My rival is called Anselmo
and I myself Eugenio--that you may know the names of the personages that
figure in this tragedy, the end of which is still in suspense, though it
is plain to see it must be disastrous.

About this time there arrived in our town one Vicente de la Roca, the son
of a poor peasant of the same town, the said Vicente having returned from
service as a soldier in Italy and divers other parts. A captain who
chanced to pass that way with his company had carried him off from our
village when he was a boy of about twelve years, and now twelve years
later the young man came back in a soldier's uniform, arrayed in a
thousand colours, and all over glass trinkets and fine steel chains.
To-day he would appear in one gay dress, to-morrow in another; but all
flimsy and gaudy, of little substance and less worth. The peasant folk,
who are naturally malicious, and when they have nothing to do can be
malice itself, remarked all this, and took note of his finery and
jewellery, piece by piece, and discovered that he had three suits of