WHICH TREATS OF THE EXALTED ADVENTURE AND RICH PRIZE OF MAMBRINO'S
HELMET, TOGETHER WITH OTHER THINGS THAT HAPPENED TO OUR INVINCIBLE KNIGHT
It now began to rain a little, and Sancho was for going into the fulling
mills, but Don Quixote had taken such an abhorrence to them on account of
the late joke that he would not enter them on any account; so turning
aside to right they came upon another road, different from that which
they had taken the night before. Shortly afterwards Don Quixote perceived
a man on horseback who wore on his head something that shone like gold,
and the moment he saw him he turned to Sancho and said:
"I think, Sancho, there is no proverb that is not true, all being maxims
drawn from experience itself, the mother of all the sciences, especially
that one that says, 'Where one door shuts, another opens.' I say so
because if last night fortune shut the door of the adventure we were
looking for against us, cheating us with the fulling mills, it now opens
wide another one for another better and more certain adventure, and if I
do not contrive to enter it, it will be my own fault, and I cannot lay it
to my ignorance of fulling mills, or the darkness of the night. I say
this because, if I mistake not, there comes towards us one who wears on
his head the helmet of Mambrino, concerning which I took the oath thou
rememberest."
"Mind what you say, your worship, and still more what you do," said
Sancho, "for I don't want any more fulling mills to finish off fulling
and knocking our senses out."
"The devil take thee, man," said Don Quixote; "what has a helmet to do
with fulling mills?"
"I don't know," replied Sancho, "but, faith, if I might speak as I used,
perhaps I could give such reasons that your worship would see you were
mistaken in what you say."
"How can I be mistaken in what I say, unbelieving traitor?" returned Don
Quixote; "tell me, seest thou not yonder knight coming towards us on a
dappled grey steed, who has upon his head a helmet of gold?"
"What I see and make out," answered Sancho, "is only a man on a grey ass
like my own, who has something that shines on his head."
"Well, that is the helmet of Mambrino," said Don Quixote; "stand to one
side and leave me alone with him; thou shalt see how, without saying a
word, to save time, I shall bring this adventure to an issue and possess
myself of the helmet I have so longed for."