Cardenio was looking at him steadily, and his mad fit having now come
upon him, he had no disposition to go on with his story, nor would Don
Quixote have listened to it, so much had what he had heard about Madasima
disgusted him. Strange to say, he stood up for her as if she were in
earnest his veritable born lady; to such a pass had his unholy books
brought him. Cardenio, then, being, as I said, now mad, when he heard
himself given the lie, and called a scoundrel and other insulting names,
not relishing the jest, snatched up a stone that he found near him, and
with it delivered such a blow on Don Quixote's breast that he laid him on
his back. Sancho Panza, seeing his master treated in this fashion,
attacked the madman with his closed fist; but the Ragged One received him
in such a way that with a blow of his fist he stretched him at his feet,
and then mounting upon him crushed his ribs to his own satisfaction; the
goatherd, who came to the rescue, shared the same fate; and having beaten
and pummelled them all he left them and quietly withdrew to his
hiding-place on the mountain. Sancho rose, and with the rage he felt at
finding himself so belaboured without deserving it, ran to take vengeance
on the goatherd, accusing him of not giving them warning that this man
was at times taken with a mad fit, for if they had known it they would
have been on their guard to protect themselves. The goatherd replied that
he had said so, and that if he had not heard him, that was no fault of
his. Sancho retorted, and the goatherd rejoined, and the altercation
ended in their seizing each other by the beard, and exchanging such
fisticuffs that if Don Quixote had not made peace between them, they
would have knocked one another to pieces.
"Leave me alone, Sir Knight of the Rueful Countenance," said Sancho,
grappling with the goatherd, "for of this fellow, who is a clown like
myself, and no dubbed knight, I can safely take satisfaction for the
affront he has offered me, fighting with him hand to hand like an honest
man."
"That is true," said Don Quixote, "but I know that he is not to blame for
what has happened."
With this he pacified them, and again asked the goatherd if it would be
possible to find Cardenio, as he felt the greatest anxiety to know the
end of his story. The goatherd told him, as he had told him before, that
there was no knowing of a certainty where his lair was; but that if he
wandered about much in that neighbourhood he could not fail to fall in
with him either in or out of his senses.