Don Quixote listened with the greatest attention to the canon's words,
and when he found he had finished, after regarding him for some time, he
replied to him:
"It appears to me, gentle sir, that your worship's discourse is intended
to persuade me that there never were any knights-errant in the world, and
that all the books of chivalry are false, lying, mischievous and useless
to the State, and that I have done wrong in reading them, and worse in
believing them, and still worse in imitating them, when I undertook to
follow the arduous calling of knight-errantry which they set forth; for
you deny that there ever were Amadises of Gaul or of Greece, or any other
of the knights of whom the books are full."
"It is all exactly as you state it," said the canon; to which Don Quixote
returned, "You also went on to say that books of this kind had done me
much harm, inasmuch as they had upset my senses, and shut me up in a
cage, and that it would be better for me to reform and change my studies,
and read other truer books which would afford more pleasure and
instruction."
"Just so," said the canon.
"Well then," returned Don Quixote, "to my mind it is you who are the one
that is out of his wits and enchanted, as you have ventured to utter such
blasphemies against a thing so universally acknowledged and accepted as
true that whoever denies it, as you do, deserves the same punishment
which you say you inflict on the books that irritate you when you read
them. For to try to persuade anybody that Amadis, and all the other
knights-adventurers with whom the books are filled, never existed, would
be like trying to persuade him that the sun does not yield light, or ice
cold, or earth nourishment. What wit in the world can persuade another
that the story of the Princess Floripes and Guy of Burgundy is not true,
or that of Fierabras and the bridge of Mantible, which happened in the
time of Charlemagne? For by all that is good it is as true as that it is
daylight now; and if it be a lie, it must be a lie too that there was a
Hector, or Achilles, or Trojan war, or Twelve Peers of France, or Arthur
of England, who still lives changed into a raven, and is unceasingly
looked for in his kingdom. One might just as well try to make out that
the history of Guarino Mezquino, or of the quest of the Holy Grail, is
false, or that the loves of Tristram and the Queen Yseult are apocryphal,
as well as those of Guinevere and Lancelot, when there are persons who
can almost remember having seen the Dame Quintanona, who was the best
cupbearer in Great Britain. And so true is this, that I recollect a
grandmother of mine on the father's side, whenever she saw any dame in a
venerable hood, used to say to me, 'Grandson, that one is like Dame
Quintanona,' from which I conclude that she must have known her, or at
least had managed to see some portrait of her. Then who can deny that the
story of Pierres and the fair Magalona is true, when even to this day may
be seen in the king's armoury the pin with which the valiant Pierres
guided the wooden horse he rode through the air, and it is a trifle
bigger than the pole of a cart? And alongside of the pin is Babieca's
saddle, and at Roncesvalles there is Roland's horn, as large as a large
beam; whence we may infer that there were Twelve Peers, and a Pierres,
and a Cid, and other knights like them, of the sort people commonly call
adventurers. Or perhaps I shall be told, too, that there was no such
knight-errant as the valiant Lusitanian Juan de Merlo, who went to
Burgundy and in the city of Arras fought with the famous lord of Charny,
Mosen Pierres by name, and afterwards in the city of Basle with Mosen
Enrique de Remesten, coming out of both encounters covered with fame and
honour; or adventures and challenges achieved and delivered, also in
Burgundy, by the valiant Spaniards Pedro Barba and Gutierre Quixada (of
whose family I come in the direct male line), when they vanquished the
sons of the Count of San Polo. I shall be told, too, that Don Fernando de
Guevara did not go in quest of adventures to Germany, where he engaged in
combat with Micer George, a knight of the house of the Duke of Austria. I
shall be told that the jousts of Suero de Quinones, him of the 'Paso,'
and the emprise of Mosen Luis de Falces against the Castilian knight, Don
Gonzalo de Guzman, were mere mockeries; as well as many other
achievements of Christian knights of these and foreign realms, which are
so authentic and true, that, I repeat, he who denies them must be totally
wanting in reason and good sense."