DON QUIXOTE

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again, as if he were love-stricken in earnest, "O Princess Dulcinea, lady
of this captive heart, a grievous wrong hast thou done me to drive me
forth with scorn, and with inexorable obduracy banish me from the
presence of thy beauty. O lady, deign to hold in remembrance this heart,
thy vassal, that thus in anguish pines for love of thee."

So he went on stringing together these and other absurdities, all in the
style of those his books had taught him, imitating their language as well
as he could; and all the while he rode so slowly and the sun mounted so
rapidly and with such fervour that it was enough to melt his brains if he
had any. Nearly all day he travelled without anything remarkable
happening to him, at which he was in despair, for he was anxious to
encounter some one at once upon whom to try the might of his strong arm.

Writers there are who say the first adventure he met with was that of
Puerto Lapice; others say it was that of the windmills; but what I have
ascertained on this point, and what I have found written in the annals of