"Remember that you stand excommunicated for having laid violent hands on
a holy thing, juxta illud, si quis, suadente diabolo."
"I do not understand that Latin," answered Don Quixote, "but I know well
I did not lay hands, only this pike; besides, I did not think I was
committing an assault upon priests or things of the Church, which, like a
Catholic and faithful Christian as I am, I respect and revere, but upon
phantoms and spectres of the other world; but even so, I remember how it
fared with Cid Ruy Diaz when he broke the chair of the ambassador of that
king before his Holiness the Pope, who excommunicated him for the same;
and yet the good Roderick of Vivar bore himself that day like a very
noble and valiant knight."
On hearing this the bachelor took his departure, as has been said,
without making any reply; and Don Quixote asked Sancho what had induced
him to call him the "Knight of the Rueful Countenance" more then than at
any other time.
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