DON QUIXOTE

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of the humble. With the knights of these days, for the most part, it is
the damask, brocade, and rich stuffs they wear, that rustle as they go,
not the chain mail of their armour; no knight now-a-days sleeps in the
open field exposed to the inclemency of heaven, and in full panoply from
head to foot; no one now takes a nap, as they call it, without drawing
his feet out of the stirrups, and leaning upon his lance, as the
knights-errant used to do; no one now, issuing from the wood, penetrates
yonder mountains, and then treads the barren, lonely shore of the
sea--mostly a tempestuous and stormy one--and finding on the beach a
little bark without oars, sail, mast, or tackling of any kind, in the
intrepidity of his heart flings himself into it and commits himself to
the wrathful billows of the deep sea, that one moment lift him up to
heaven and the next plunge him into the depths; and opposing his breast
to the irresistible gale, finds himself, when he least expects it, three
thousand leagues and more away from the place where he embarked; and
leaping ashore in a remote and unknown land has adventures that deserve
to be written, not on parchment, but on brass. But now sloth triumphs