DON QUIXOTE

Back Forward Menu

suffer. For I would have thee know, Sancho, that wounds caused by any
instruments which happen by chance to be in hand inflict no indignity,
and this is laid down in the law of the duel in express words: if, for
instance, the cobbler strikes another with the last which he has in his
hand, though it be in fact a piece of wood, it cannot be said for that
reason that he whom he struck with it has been cudgelled. I say this lest
thou shouldst imagine that because we have been drubbed in this affray we
have therefore suffered any indignity; for the arms those men carried,
with which they pounded us, were nothing more than their stakes, and not
one of them, so far as I remember, carried rapier, sword, or dagger."

"They gave me no time to see that much," answered Sancho, "for hardly had
I laid hand on my tizona when they signed the cross on my shoulders with
their sticks in such style that they took the sight out of my eyes and
the strength out of my feet, stretching me where I now lie, and where
thinking of whether all those stake-strokes were an indignity or not
gives me no uneasiness, which the pain of the blows does, for they will