ented to Don Quixote that she was a princess
despoiled of her kingdom, and that he must rescue her lands from the
power of a great and sour-faced giant that held them.

The curate and the barber had disguised themselves before they met Don
Quixote so that he might not recognize them and guess their design.
They found him half stripped of his clothing and doing penance for the
beautiful Dulcinea in his shirt and drawers. He was engaged in a
useless fast in the wilderness where he cut many ridiculous capers and
was almost starved into the bargain. Sancho, he had sent away with a
letter to Dulcinea, but Sancho returned with the curate and the barber
and the young lady and together they tricked the mad knight into
returning in the direction of his native village.

On their way, however, they stopped at an inn where yet another
adventure was to befall Don Quixote, for dreaming of the giant from
whom he was to rescue the lady's kingdom he attacked with his sword two
wine skins that were in his room and flooded his apartment with red
wine.

Before he could be taken home, however, his madness broke out on him so
violently that still another scheme had to be employed. His friends,
disguised, crept into his chamber and tied him hand and foot. Then the
poor knight was placed in a wooden cage and borne home behind two oxen.

Of the many adventures that Don Quixote encountered, how he broke away
from home once more and how his Squire Sancho actually did become the
ruler of an island for a brief period, it is impossible to write here.
But the name of Don Quixote, through the marvelous writer who created
this character, has become known throughout the world, and stands
to-day as the symbol for high ideals and self-sacrifice that are
carried to the point of madness and utter folly.

Cervantes had still another design in creating Don Quixote than to make
an amusing story, for he intended to bring into ridicule and disrepute
the old-fashioned stories of chivalry with which Spain was filled at
the time he lived. And he succeeded so well that since his day not
another one has been written.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A TREASURY OF HEROES AND HEROINES***

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