gathering up the remaining fragments of the lance, he finished with a discharge upon the unhappy victim, who all through the storm of sticks that rained on him never ceased threatening heaven, and earth, and the brigands, for such they seemed to him. At last the muleteer was tired, and the traders continued their journey, taking with them matter for talk about the poor fellow who had been cudgelled. He when he found himself alone made another effort to rise; but if he was unable when whole and sound, how was he to rise after having been thrashed and well-nigh knocked to pieces? And yet he esteemed himself fortunate, as it seemed to him that this was a regular knight-errant's mishap, and entirely, he considered, the fault of his horse. However, battered in body as he was, to rise was beyond his power.
CHAPTER V.
IN WHICH THE NARRATIVE OF OUR KNIGHT'S MISHAP IS CONTINUED.
Finding, then, that in fact he could not move, he bethought himself of having recourse to his usual remedy, which was to think of some passage in his books, and his craze brought to his mind that about Baldwin and the Marquis of Mantua, when Carloto left him wounded on the mountain side,[1] a story known by heart by the children, not forgotten by the young men, and lauded and even believed by the old folk; and for all that not a whit truer than the miracles of Mahomet. This seemed to him to fit exactly the case in which he found himself, so, making a show of severe suffering, he began to roll on the ground and with feeble breath repeat the very words which the wounded knight of the wood is said to have uttered:
"Where art thou, lady mine: that thou
My sorrow dost not rue?
Thou canst not know it, lady mine,
Or else thou art untrue."
- ↑ The subject of the old ballad—De Mantua salió el Marques (Duran's Romancero General, No. 355); a chanson de geste, indeed, rather than a ballad, as it runs to something over 800 lines. Pellicer wrongly assigns it to Geronimo Trevifio, a sixteenth century author. It is in the Antwerp Cancionero of 1550 and the Saragossa Silva of the same date.
