Page:The History of the Valorous and Wity Knight-Errant, Don-Quixote of the Mancha. Volume three.djvu/30

2 not to touch upon any point of knight-errantry, because they would not endanger the ripping up of a sore whose stitches made it yet tender.

At length they visited him, whom they found set up in his bed, clad in a waistcoat of green baize, on his head a red Toledo bonnet, so dried and withered up as if his flesh had been mummied. He welcomed them, and they asked him touching his health: of it and himself he gave them good account, with much judgment and elegant phrase, and in process of discourse they fell into State matters, and manner of government, correcting this abuse and condemning that; reforming one custom and rejecting another, each of the three making himself a new law-maker, a modem Lycurgus, and a spick-and-span new Solon; and they so refined the Commonwealth as if they had clapped it into a forge, and drawn it out in another fashion than they had put it in. Don Quixote in all was so discreet that the two examiners undoubtedly believed he was quite well and in his right mind. The niece and the old woman were present at this discourse, and could never give God thanks enough, when they saw their master with so good understanding. But the vicar, changing his first intent, which was not to meddle in matters of cavallery, would now make a thorough trial of Don Quixote's perfect recovery; and so now and then tells him news from court, and, amongst others, that it was given out for certain that the Turk was come down with a powerful army, that his design was not known, nor where such a cloud would discharge itself, and that all Christendom was affrighted with this terror he puts us in with his yearly alarm; likewise, that his Majesty had made strong the coasts of Naples, Sicily, and Malta. To this said Don Quixote, "His Majesty hath done like a most