'By my faith, Sir,' said Sancho, 'if we have no better proof of our story than what you say, the helmet of Mambrino is as arrant a basin as this fellow's trappings are a pack-saddle.'
'Do what I command,' replied Don Quixote, 'for I cannot believe that all things in this Castle are governed by enchantment.'
Sancho went for the basin and brought it, and as soon as Don Quixote saw it, he took it in his hands and said: 'See, Sirs, with what face can this impudent Squire declare that this is a basin, and not the helmet that I have mentioned. I swear to you by the order of Knighthood which I profess, that this is the very same helmet which I won from him, without having added or taken anything from it.'
'There is no doubt of that,' said Sancho, 'for, since the time my Lord won it until now, he never fought but one battle with it, when he delivered the unlucky chained men. And but for his basin, I mean helmet, he had not escaped so free as he did, so thick a shower of stones rained all the time of that battle.'
Wherein is finally decided the Dispute about Mambrino's Helmet and the Pannel
'Good Sirs,' cried the Barber, 'what do you think of those who will contend that this is not a basin but a helmet?'
'He that shall say the contrary,' said Don Quixote, 'I will make him know that he lies, if he be a Knight; and if he be but a Squire, that he lies and lies again a thousand times.'
The Barber Nicholas, Don Quixote's friend, who was then with the rest, had a mind to carry the jest further, and make them all laugh, so, speaking to the other Barber, he said: 'Sir Barber, or whoever you are, know that I am also of your profession, and have held a certificate for more than twenty years, and I know all the instruments of a Barber's art well. Moreover, in my youth I was a soldier, and I know what a helmet is like, and a morion, and a casque, and other kinds of soldiers' arms. And therefore I say, always subject to better opinion, that this good piece which is laid here before us, and which this good Knight holds in his hand, not only is not a Barber's basin, but is as far from being one as white is from black. It is a helmet, though, as I think, not a complete helmet.'
'No, truly,' said Don Quixote, 'for it wants the half, namely the lower part and the visor.'