The lions

We had fallen in on the road with a gentleman in a green riding coat trimmed with tawny velvet, on a fine grey mare: Don Diego de Miranda, a man of some fifty years, grave and courteous, who looked at my armour for a long time before he said anything about it. We were talking very agreeably of his son, who will be a poet whatever his father says, when I saw a cart coming towards us flying the royal banners.

I was certain an adventure was upon us, and I called to Sancho for my helmet. Now Sancho had just bought a little fresh curd cheese from some shepherds, and, having nowhere else to put it, he had put it in the helmet. He handed it to me in haste and I clapped it on. In a moment whey was running down my face and into my beard. I cried out that either my brains were melting or I was sweating from the skull, which I had never done before, and that it was a sure sign of terrible danger to come. Sancho said nothing, which is unlike him. When I took the helmet off and found the curds, he swore that the enchanters had put them there. I believed him at the time, and I am inclined to believe him still, though I note he did not eat any curd cheese for the rest of the day.

01 Two lions for the king

The cart drew up. On it sat a carter, and on the front of it the keeper of the lions, and behind them a great wooden cage. The keeper told me the cage held two lions, a male and a female, sent by the General of Oran as a present to His Majesty, and that they were the largest ever brought over from Africa. The male, he added, had not eaten since morning, so would I kindly let them pass.

I asked whether lions were sent against me. I said this quietly, and I thought it well said. Then I commanded the keeper to open the cage, so that I might show these lions, in the middle of this road, who Don Quixote de la Mancha was, in spite of the enchanters who sent them.

Don Diego tried to dissuade me. He said that true valour is not the same thing as rashness, and that these lions were not sent against me but to the king. I answered that every man should mind his own business, and that this was mine. The keeper said that if he opened the cage the lions would eat us all, beginning with the mules. Sancho wept, and begged me with tears running down into his beard to consider that the beast he had glimpsed through the bars had a claw on it the size of a mountain. I told him that fear made him see with magnifying glasses, and that if I died he was to go to Dulcinea and tell her the manner of it.

I gave the others time to withdraw. Don Diego retired some distance with his mare, Sancho went further with Dapple, and the carter unharnessed his mules and went further still. I dismounted, since Rocinante might have been frightened, and he is not the knight of this history. I took my shield on my arm, drew my sword, and stood before the cage commending myself to God and to my lady.

02 What the lion did

The keeper opened the cage door wide. The lion turned round in his cage, put out a paw, and stretched himself from end to end. He opened his mouth and yawned, very slowly, showing a tongue as long as my forearm, with which he then washed his eyes and face. He put his head out of the cage and looked all about him with eyes like coals. Then he looked at me for some time. Then, having seen what there was to see, he turned his back on me, showed me his hindquarters, and lay down again in the cage.

I commanded the keeper to poke him with a stick and make him come out. The keeper refused. He said, with great sense, that the greatness of my courage was already proved; that no knight is bound to do more than challenge his enemy and wait for him in the field; and that if the enemy declines to come out, the shame is the enemy's and the crown the challenger's. I saw the justice of this. A knight must not be greedy for battle when honour is already satisfied.

I had him shut the door and give me a certificate of what he had seen, and I waved a white cloth on my lance to call back the others. They came very slowly. Sancho, when he saw me alive, ran the last part of the way, and then pretended he had been running to catch Dapple. I gave the keeper and the carter two gold crowns for the delay I had caused them, and the keeper promised to tell the king himself about the deed when he reached the court.

From that day I have changed my title. Until now I was the Knight of the Sad Face; but knights of old changed their names whenever it pleased them, and from now on I shall be the Knight of the Lions. Don Diego said nothing for some miles. I think he was overcome.

Read nextFour days with the Knight of the Green CoatDon Diego's house, where I rested after the lions.

Sage chronicler, if you write that the lion was merely bored, I shall not quarrel with you, but I beg you to add that it was bored in my presence and not in yours.