WHICH TREATS OF THE CHARACTER AND PURSUITS OF THE FAMOUS GENTLEMAN DON

QUIXOTE OF LA MANCHA

In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to

mind, there lived not long since one of those gentlemen that keep a lance

in the lance-rack, an old buckler, a lean hack, and a greyhound for

coursing. An olla of rather more beef than mutton, a salad on most

nights, scraps on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, and a pigeon or so extra

on Sundays, made away with three-quarters of his income. The rest of it

went in a doublet of fine cloth and velvet breeches and shoes to match

for holidays, while on week-days he made a brave figure in his best

homespun. He had in his house a housekeeper past forty, a niece under

twenty, and a lad for the field and market-place, who used to saddle the

hack as well as handle the bill-hook. The age of this gentleman of ours

was bordering on fifty; he was of a hardy habit, spare, gaunt-featured, a

very early riser and a great sportsman. They will have it his surname was

Quixada or Quesada (for here there is some difference of opinion among

the authors who write on the subject), although from reasonable

conjectures it seems plain that he was called Quexana. This, however, is

of but little importance to our tale; it will be enough not to stray a

hair's breadth from the truth in the telling of it.

You must know, then, that the above-named gentleman whenever he was at

leisure (which was mostly all the year round) gave himself up to reading

books of chivalry with such ardour and avidity that he almost entirely

neglected the pursuit of his field-sports, and even the management of his

property; and to such a pitch did his eagerness and infatuation go that

he sold many an acre of tillageland to buy books of chivalry to read, and

brought home as many of them as he could get. But of all there were none

he liked so well as those of the famous Feliciano de Silva's composition,

for their lucidity of style and complicated conceits were as pearls in

his sight, particularly when in his reading he came upon courtships and

cartels, where he often found passages like "the reason of the unreason

with which my reason is afflicted so weakens my reason that with reason I

murmur at your beauty;" or again, "the high heavens, that of your

divinity divinely fortify you with the stars, render you deserving of the

desert your greatness deserves." Over conceits of this sort the poor

gentleman lost his wits, and used to lie awake striving to understand

them and worm the meaning out of them; what Aristotle himself could not

have made out or extracted had he come to life again for that special

purpose. He was not at all easy about the wounds which Don Belianis gave

and took, because it seemed to him that, great as were the surgeons who

had cured him, he must have had his face and body covered all over with

seams and scars. He commended, however, the author's way of ending his

book with the promise of that interminable adventure, and many a time was

he tempted to take up his pen and finish it properly as is there

proposed, which no doubt he would have done, and made a successful piece

of work of it too, had not greater and more absorbing thoughts prevented

him.




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