In Don Quixote, when Sancho Panza’s ass is stolen, Quixote sympathizes and the two ride on … Sancho somehow “sitting side-ways on his ass.” In the next chapter he laments its loss again: “It may be well to saddle Rocinante again, that he may supply the loss of my Dapple.”

Sancho also leaves his wallet at an inn and loses his cloak and the food it contains. Yet later he discovers the food on the ass … and puts gold in his wallet.

Strangely, these errors appear in the novel’s second edition but not the first. No one knows how this happened; possibly it’s a compositor’s error, or perhaps Cervantes added a page without weaving it into the narrative.

See Cast Away.