Don Quixote overheard the conversation and said, "Haply,gentlemen, you are versed and learned in matters of errant chivalry?Because if you are I will tell you my misfortunes; if not, there is nogood in my giving myself the trouble of relating them;" but here thecurate and the barber, seeing that the travellers were engaged inconversation with Don Quixote, came forward, in order to answer insuch a way as to save their stratagem from being discovered.
The canon, replying to Don Quixote, said, "In truth, brother, I knowmore about books of chivalry than I do about Villalpando's elements oflogic; so if that be all, you may safely tell me what you please."
"In God's name, then, senor," replied Don Quixote; "if that be so, Iwould have you know that I am held enchanted in this cage by theenvy and fraud of wicked enchanters; for virtue is more persecutedby the wicked than loved by the good. I am a knight-errant, and notone of those whose names Fame has never thought of immortalising inher record, but of those who, in defiance and in spite of envy itself,and all the magicians that Persia, or Brahmans that India, orGymnosophists that Ethiopia ever produced, will place their names inthe temple of immortality, to serve as examples and patterns forages to come, whereby knights-errant may see the footsteps in whichthey must tread if they would attain the summit and crowning pointof honour in arms."
"What Senor Don Quixote of La Mancha says," observed the curate, "isthe truth; for he goes enchanted in this cart, not from any fault orsins of his, but because of the malevolence of those to whom virtue isodious and valour hateful. This, senor, is the Knight of the RuefulCountenance, if you have ever heard him named, whose valiantachievements and mighty deeds shall be written on lasting brass andimperishable marble, notwithstanding all the efforts of envy toobscure them and malice to hide them."
When the canon heard both the prisoner and the man who was atliberty talk in such a strain he was ready to cross himself in hisastonishment, and could not make out what had befallen him; and allhis attendants were in the same state of amazement.
At this point Sancho Panza, who had drawn near to hear theconversation, said, in order to make everything plain, "Well, sirs,you may like or dislike what I am going to say, but the fact of thematter is, my master, Don Quixote, is just as much enchanted as mymother. He is in his full senses, he eats and he drinks, and he hashis calls like other men and as he had yesterday, before they cagedhim. And if that's the case, what do they mean by wanting me tobelieve that he is enchanted? For I have heard many a one say thatenchanted people neither eat, nor sleep, nor talk; and my master, ifyou don't stop him, will talk more than thirty lawyers." Thenturning to the curate he exclaimed, "Ah, senor curate, senor curate!do you think I don't know you? Do you think I don't guess and seethe drift of these new enchantments? Well then, I can tell you Iknow you, for all your face is covered, and I can tell you I am upto you, however you may hide your tricks. After all, where envy reignsvirtue cannot live, and where there is niggardliness there can be noliberality. Ill betide the devil! if it had not been for yourworship my master would be married to the Princess Micomicona thisminute, and I should be a count at least; for no less was to beexpected, as well from the goodness of my master, him of the RuefulCountenance, as from the greatness of my services. But I see now howtrue it is what they say in these parts, that the wheel of fortuneturns faster than a mill-wheel, and that those who were up yesterdayare down to-day. I am sorry for my wife and children, for when theymight fairly and reasonably expect to see their father return tothem a governor or viceroy of some island or kingdom, they will seehim come back a horse-boy. I have said all this, senor curate, only tourge your paternity to lay to your conscience your ill-treatment of mymaster; and have a care that God does not call you to account inanother life for making a prisoner of him in this way, and chargeagainst you all the succours and good deeds that my lord Don Quixoteleaves undone while he is shut up.
"Trim those lamps there!" exclaimed the barber at this; "so youare of the same fraternity as your master, too, Sancho? By God, Ibegin to see that you will have to keep him company in the cage, andbe enchanted like him for having caught some of his humour andchivalry. It was an evil hour when you let yourself be got withchild by his promises, and that island you long so much for foundits way into your head."
"I am not with child by anyone," returned Sancho, "nor am I a man tolet myself be got with child, if it was by the King himself. ThoughI am poor I am an old Christian, and I owe nothing to nobody, and if Ilong for an island, other people long for worse. Each of us is the sonof his own works; and being a man I may come to be pope, not to saygovernor of an island, especially as my master may win so many that hewill not know whom to give them to. Mind how you talk, masterbarber; for shaving is not everything, and there is some differencebetween Peter and Peter. I say this because we all know one another,and it will not do to throw false dice with me; and as to theenchantment of my master, God knows the truth; leave it as it is; itonly makes it worse to stir it."
The barber did not care to answer Sancho lest by his plainspeaking he should disclose what the curate and he himself were tryingso hard to conceal; and under the same apprehension the curate hadasked the canon to ride on a little in advance, so that he mighttell him the mystery of this man in the cage, and other things thatwould amuse him. The canon agreed, and going on ahead with hisservants, listened with attention to the account of the character,life, madness, and ways of Don Quixote, given him by the curate, whodescribed to him briefly the beginning and origin of his craze, andtold him the whole story of his adventures up to his being confined inthe cage, together with the plan they had of taking him home to try ifby any means they could discover a cure for his madness. The canon andhis servants were surprised anew when they heard Don Quixote's strangestory, and when it was finished he said, "To tell the truth, senorcurate, I for my part consider what they call books of chivalry tobe mischievous to the State; and though, led by idle and falsetaste, I have read the beginnings of almost all that have beenprinted, I never could manage to read any one of them from beginningto end; for it seems to me they are all more or less the same thing;and one has nothing more in it than another; this no more than that.And in my opinion this sort of writing and composition is of thesame species as the fables they call the Milesian, nonsensical talesthat aim solely at giving amusement and not instruction, exactly theopposite of the apologue fables which amuse and instruct at the sametime. And though it may be the chief object of such books to amuse,I do not know how they can succeed, when they are so full of suchmonstrous nonsense. For the enjoyment the mind feels must come fromthe beauty and harmony which it perceives or contemplates in thethings that the eye or the imagination brings before it; and nothingthat has any ugliness or disproportion about it can give any pleasure.What beauty, then, or what proportion of the parts to the whole, or ofthe whole to the parts, can there be in a book or fable where a lad ofsixteen cuts down a giant as tall as a tower and makes two halves ofhim as if he was an almond cake? And when they want to give us apicture of a battle, after having told us that there are a millionof combatants on the side of the enemy, let the hero of the book beopposed to them, and we have perforce to believe, whether we like itor not, that the said knight wins the victory by the single might ofhis strong arm. And then, what shall we say of the facility with whicha born queen or empress will give herself over into the arms of someunknown wandering knight? What mind, that is not wholly barbarousand uncultured, can find pleasure in reading of how a great tower fullof knights sails away across the sea like a ship with a fair wind, andwill be to-night in Lombardy and to-morrow morning in the land ofPrester John of the Indies, or some other that Ptolemy never describednor Marco Polo saw? And if, in answer to this, I am told that theauthors of books of the kind write them as fiction, and thereforeare not bound to regard niceties of truth, I would reply thatfiction is all the better the more it looks like truth, and givesthe more pleasure the more probability and possibility there isabout it. Plots in fiction should be wedded to the understanding ofthe reader, and be constructed in such a way that, reconcilingimpossibilities, smoothing over difficulties, keeping the mind onthe alert, they may surprise, interest, divert, and entertain, so thatwonder and delight joined may keep pace one with the other; allwhich he will fail to effect who shuns verisimilitude and truth tonature, wherein lies the perfection of writing. I have never yetseen any book of chivalry that puts together a connected plot completein all its numbers, so that the middle agrees with the beginning,and the end with the beginning and middle; on the contrary, theyconstruct them with such a multitude of members that it seems asthough they meant to produce a chimera or monster rather than awell-proportioned figure. And besides all this they are harsh in theirstyle, incredible in their achievements, licentious in their amours,uncouth in their courtly speeches, prolix in their battles, silly intheir arguments, absurd in their travels, and, in short, wanting ineverything like intelligent art; for which reason they deserve to bebanished from the Christian commonwealth as a worthless breed."