Miguel Cervantes

THE HISTORY OF DON QUIXOTE DE LA MANCHA
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CHAPTER II.

Which treats of Don Quixote's first sally.

[Pg 5] These preparations being made, he found his designs ripe for action, and thought it now a crime to deny himself any longer to the injured world that wanted such a deliverer; the more when he considered what grievances he was to redress, what wrongs and injuries to remove, what abuses to correct, and what duties to discharge. So one morning before day, in the greatest heat of July, without acquainting any one with his design, with all the secrecy imaginable, he armed himself cap-a-pie, laced on his ill-contrived helmet, braced on his target, grasped his lance, mounted Rozinante, and at the private door of his back-yard sallied out into the fields, wonderfully pleased to see with how much ease he had succeeded in the beginning of his enterprise. But he had not gone far ere a terrible thought alarmed him; a thought that had like to have made him renounce his great undertaking; for now it came into his mind, that the honour of knighthood had not yet been conferred upon him, and therefore, according to the laws of chivalry, he neither could nor ought to appear in arms against any professed knight; nay, he also considered, that though he were already knighted, it would become him to wear white armour, and not to adorn his shield with any device, until he had deserved one by some extraordinary demonstration of his valour.

These thoughts staggered his resolution; but his frenzy prevailing more than reason, he resolved to be dubbed a knight by the first he should meet, after the example of several others, who, as the romances informed him, had formerly done the like. As for the other difficulty about wearing white armour, he proposed to overcome it, by scouring his own at leisure until it should look whiter than ermine. And having thus dismissed these scruples, he rode calmly on, leaving it to his horse to go which way he pleased; firmly believing, that in this consisted the very essence of adventures. And as he thus went on, "no doubt," said he to himself, "that when the history of my famous achievements shall be given to the world, the learned author will begin it in this very manner, when he comes to give an account of this my setting out: 'Scarce had the ruddy Phœbus begun to spread the golden tresses of his lovely hair over the vast surface of the earthly globe, and scarce had those feathered poets of the grove, the pretty painted birds, tuned their little pipes, to sing their early welcomes in soft melodious strains to the beautiful Aurora, displaying her rosy graces to mortal eyes from the gates and balconies of the Manchegan horizon,—when the renowned knight Don Quixote de la Mancha, disdaining soft repose, forsook the [Pg 6] voluptuous down, and mounting his famous steed Rozinante, entered the ancient and celebrated plains of Montiel.'" This was indeed the very road (...)

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