DON QUIXOTE

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life of the wedding, wandering through the pleasant grounds in separate
bands, some dancing, others singing, others playing the various
instruments already mentioned. In short, it seemed as though mirth and
gaiety were frisking and gambolling all over the meadow. Several other
persons were engaged in erecting raised benches from which people might
conveniently see the plays and dances that were to be performed the next
day on the spot dedicated to the celebration of the marriage of Camacho
the rich and the obsequies of Basilio. Don Quixote would not enter the
village, although the peasant as well as the bachelor pressed him; he
excused himself, however, on the grounds, amply sufficient in his
opinion, that it was the custom of knights-errant to sleep in the fields
and woods in preference to towns, even were it under gilded ceilings; and
so turned aside a little out of the road, very much against Sancho's
will, as the good quarters he had enjoyed in the castle or house of Don
Diego came back to his mind.