Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervants, Chapter V, Paragraphs 1-5

Okay, I'm going to slow this down a bit since I'm getting the feeling I lost some readers. So we'll just do the first five paragraphs of Chapter V today.

IN WHICH THE NARRATIVE OF OUR KNIGHT'S MISHAP IS CONTINUED

PARAGRAPHS 1-4: Finding, then, that, in fact he could not move, he thought 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, 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.

And so he went on with the ballad as far as the lines:

O noble Marquis of Mantua, My Uncle and liege lord!

TIM-ELVIS' OBSERVATIONS ON CHAPTER V, PARAGRAPHS 1-4:
When we last left Don Quixote, he was rolling around on his back like an overturned turtle, unable to stand up due to the weight of his armor and the beating a mule driver had given him when he challenged a group of merchants on the road.

Since he doesn't have anything better to do while he is incapacitated on the ground, Don Quixote recalls a passage from one of his many adventure books in which a knight is in a similar predicament (although I'm willing to bet that knight didn't get the bejesus beat out of him by a mule driver). He lies there rolling around shouting about his lady and why she doesn't come to him in his darkest hour.

PARAGRAPH 5: As chance would have it, when he had got to this line there happened to come by a peasant from his own village, a neighbour of his, who had been with a load of wheat to the mill, and he, seeing the man stretched there, came up to him and asked him who he was and what was the matter with him that he complained so dolefully.

TIM-ELVIS' OBSERVATIONS ON CHAPTER V, PARAGRAPH 5:
While he is lying there reciting poetry, one of his neighbors, a peasant farmer who is coming back from a mill where he's dropped off a load of wheat, finds him and asks him who he is and what is his problem.

Tomorrow, we find out if the peasant helps Don Quixote. I bet he does.