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With this thought in mind he approached Sancho, having first taken Rocinante’s reins and arranged them so that he could use them as a whip, and began to remove the cords that held up Sancho’s breeches, although it is believed he had them only in front; but no sooner had Don Quixote come up to him than Sancho started, fully awake, and said:

“What is it? Who’s touching me and untying my cords?”

“I am,” responded Don Quixote. “I have come to make up for your failings and to put an end to my travails: I have come to whip you, Sancho, and to discharge, in part, the debt you have assumed. Dulcinea perishes; you live in negligence; I die of desire; and so, expose yourself of your own free will, for mine is to give you at least two thousand lashes in this solitary place.”

“Oh, no,” said Sancho, “your grace had better stand still; if not, by the true God, even the deaf will hear us. The lashes I promised to give myself must be voluntary, not given by force, and now I don’t feel like lashing myself; it’s enough for me to give your grace my word to flog and thrash myself as soon as I feel that desire.”

“It must not be left to your courtesy, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “because you have a hard heart, and although you are a peasant, your flesh is tender.”

And so he attempted and struggled to untie the cords, seeing which Sancho Panza got to his feet, rushed at his master in a fury, and tripped him so that he fell to the ground and lay there faceup; Sancho placed his right knee on his chest, and with his hands he held down his master’s hands, not allowing him to move and barely permitting him to breathe. Don Quixote said to him:

“What, you traitor? You dare to raise your hand against your natural lord and master? You presume to defy the person who gives you your bread?”

“I depose no king, I impose no king,” responded Sancho, “but I’ll help myself, for I’m my own lord.1 Promise me, your grace, that you’ll stay where you are, and won’t try to whip me now, and I’ll let you go and set you free; if not,

Oh, here you will die, you traitor

enemy of Doña Sancha.”2

Don Quixote promised and swore by his life and thoughts not to touch a thread of Sancho’s clothing and to leave the administering of the lashes entirely to his free will and desire.

Sancho got up and moved a good distance away, and as he was about to lean against another tree, he felt something graze his head, and he raised his hands and touched two feet in shoes and stockings. He trembled with fear and hurried to another tree, where the same thing happened. He shouted, calling for Don Quixote to help him. Don Quixote approached, asking what had happened and why he was afraid, and Sancho responded that all the trees were filled with human feet and legs. Don Quixote touched them and soon realized what they might be, and he said to Sancho:

“There is no need for you to be afraid, because these feet and legs that you touch but do not see undoubtedly belong to outlaws and bandits who have been hanged from these trees, for in this region the law usually hangs them when it catches them, in groups of twenty or thirty, which leads me to think I must be close to Barcelona.”3

And the truth was just as he had imagined it.

They looked up, apparently, and saw the bodies of bandits hanging from the branches of those trees. Just then dawn broke, and if the dead men had startled them, they were no less distressed by the more than forty live bandits who suddenly surrounded them, telling them in Catalan to stand still and be quiet until their captain arrived.

Don Quixote found himself on foot, his horse unbridled, his lance leaning against a tree, in short, with no defenses at all, and so he considered it the wisest course to fold his hands, bow his head, and wait for a better occasion and opportunity.

The bandits quickly looked over the gray and left nothing in the saddlebags and traveling case; it was Sancho’s good fortune that he carried the duke’s escudos and the ones he had brought from