They were now got out of the wood, and saw the three wenches very near.
Don Quixote looked eagerly along the road towards Toboso, and seeing nobody but the three wenches, he asked Sancho, in much agitation, whether they were out of the city when he left them.
"Out of the city!" answered Sancho; "are your worship's eyes in the nape of your neck, that you do not see them now before you, shining like the sun at noon-day?"
"I see only three country girls," answered Don Quixote, "on three asses."
"Now, Heaven keep me from the devil," answered Sancho; "is it possible that three palfreys, or how do you call them, white as the driven snow, should look to you like asses? As the Lord liveth, you shall pluck off this beard of mine if it be so."
"I tell thee, friend Sancho," answered Don Quixote, "that it is as certain they are asses, as that I am Don Quixote and thou Sancho Panza;--at least, so they seem to me."
"Sir," quoth Sancho, "say not such a thing; but snuff those eyes of yours, and come and pay reverence to the mistress of your soul." So saying he advanced forward to meet the peasant girls, and, alighting from Dapple, he laid hold of one of their asses by the halter, and bending both knees to the ground, said to the girl: "Queen, princess, and duchess of beauty, let your haughtiness and greatness be pleased to receive into grace and good-liking your captive knight, who stands turned there into stone, all disorder, and without any pulse, to find himself before your magnificent presence. I am Sancho Panza, his squire, and he is that way-worn knight Don Quixote de la Mancha, otherwise called the Knight of the Sorrowful Figure."
It is not courage, but rashness, for one man singly to encounter an army, where death is present, and where emperors fight in person, assisted by good and bad angels.
Good Christians should never revenge injuries.
A sparrow in the hand is better than a vulture on the wing.
At the conclusion of this drama of life, death strips us of the robes which make the difference between man and man, and leaves us all on one level in the grave.
Nor let it be taken amiss that any comparison should be made between the mutual cordiality of animals and that of men; for much useful knowledge and many salutary precepts have been taught by the brute creation.