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

Advertisement..

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."




Most Popular