"If you did not pique yourself more on your dexterity with those foils
you carry than on dexterity of tongue," said the other student, "you
would have been head of the degrees, where you are now tail."
"Look here, bachelor Corchuelo," returned the licentiate, "you have the
most mistaken idea in the world about skill with the sword, if you think
it useless."
"It is no idea on my part, but an established truth," replied Corchuelo;
"and if you wish me to prove it to you by experiment, you have swords
there, and it is a good opportunity; I have a steady hand and a strong
arm, and these joined with my resolution, which is not small, will make
you confess that I am not mistaken. Dismount and put in practice your
positions and circles and angles and science, for I hope to make you see
stars at noonday with my rude raw swordsmanship, in which, next to God, I
place my trust that the man is yet to be born who will make me turn my
back, and that there is not one in the world I will not compel to give
ground."
"As to whether you turn your back or not, I do not concern myself,"
replied the master of fence; "though it might be that your grave would be
dug on the spot where you planted your foot the first time; I mean that
you would be stretched dead there for despising skill with the sword."
"We shall soon see," replied Corchuelo, and getting off his ass briskly,
he drew out furiously one of the swords the licentiate carried on his
beast.
"It must not be that way," said Don Quixote at this point; "I will be the
director of this fencing match, and judge of this often disputed
question;" and dismounting from Rocinante and grasping his lance, he
planted himself in the middle of the road, just as the licentiate, with
an easy, graceful bearing and step, advanced towards Corchuelo, who came
on against him, darting fire from his eyes, as the saying is. The other
two of the company, the peasants, without dismounting from their asses,
served as spectators of the mortal tragedy. The cuts, thrusts, down
strokes, back strokes and doubles, that Corchuelo delivered were past
counting, and came thicker than hops or hail. He attacked like an angry
lion, but he was met by a tap on the mouth from the button of the
licentiate's sword that checked him in the midst of his furious onset,
and made him kiss it as if it were a relic, though not as devoutly as
relics are and ought to be kissed. The end of it was that the licentiate
reckoned up for him by thrusts every one of the buttons of the short
cassock he wore, tore the skirts into strips, like the tails of a
cuttlefish, knocked off his hat twice, and so completely tired him out,
that in vexation, anger, and rage, he took the sword by the hilt and
flung it away with such force, that one of the peasants that were there,
who was a notary, and who went for it, made an affidavit afterwards that
he sent it nearly three-quarters of a league, which testimony will serve,
and has served, to show and establish with all certainty that strength is
overcome by skill.