DON QUIXOTE

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this was what made it seem to Don Quixote to be a dapple-grey steed and a
knight and a golden helmet; for everything he saw he made to fall in with
his crazy chivalry and ill-errant notions; and when he saw the poor
knight draw near, without entering into any parley with him, at
Rocinante's top speed he bore down upon him with the pike pointed low,
fully determined to run him through and through, and as he reached him,
without checking the fury of his charge, he cried to him:

"Defend thyself, miserable being, or yield me of thine own accord that
which is so reasonably my due."

The barber, who without any expectation or apprehension of it saw this
apparition coming down upon him, had no other way of saving himself from
the stroke of the lance but to let himself fall off his ass; and no
sooner had he touched the ground than he sprang up more nimbly than a
deer and sped away across the plain faster than the wind.