DON QUIXOTE

Back Forward Menu

two thousand gold crowns and a paper in which she said that the next
Juma, that is to say Friday, she was going to her father's garden, but
that before she went she would give us more money; and if it were not
enough we were to let her know, as she would give us as much as we asked,
for her father had so much he would not miss it, and besides she kept all
the keys.

We at once gave the renegade five hundred crowns to buy the vessel, and
with eight hundred I ransomed myself, giving the money to a Valencian
merchant who happened to be in Algiers at the time, and who had me
released on his word, pledging it that on the arrival of the first ship
from Valencia he would pay my ransom; for if he had given the money at
once it would have made the king suspect that my ransom money had been
for a long time in Algiers, and that the merchant had for his own
advantage kept it secret. In fact my master was so difficult to deal with
that I dared not on any account pay down the money at once. The Thursday
before the Friday on which the fair Zoraida was to go to the garden she