DON QUIXOTE

Back Forward Menu

All this was heard distinctly by the curate and those with him, and as it
seemed to them to be uttered close by, as indeed it was, they got up to
look for the speaker, and before they had gone twenty paces they
discovered behind a rock, seated at the foot of an ash tree, a youth in
the dress of a peasant, whose face they were unable at the moment to see
as he was leaning forward, bathing his feet in the brook that flowed
past. They approached so silently that he did not perceive them, being
fully occupied in bathing his feet, which were so fair that they looked
like two pieces of shining crystal brought forth among the other stones
of the brook. The whiteness and beauty of these feet struck them with
surprise, for they did not seem to have been made to crush clods or to
follow the plough and the oxen as their owner's dress suggested; and so,
finding they had not been noticed, the curate, who was in front, made a
sign to the other two to conceal themselves behind some fragments of rock
that lay there; which they did, observing closely what the youth was
about. He had on a loose double-skirted dark brown jacket bound tight to
his body with a white cloth; he wore besides breeches and gaiters of