e and reading much,
the moisture of his brain was exhausted to that degree that at last he
lost the use of his reason. A world of disorderly notions, picked out
of his books, crowded into his imagination; and now his head was full
of nothing but enchantments, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds,
complaints, amours, torments, and abundance of stuff and
impossibilities; insomuch that all the fables and fantastical tales
which he read, seemed to him now as true as the most authentic
histories. He would say, that the Cid Ruy Diaz was a very brave
knight, but not worthy to stand in competition with the Knight of the
Burning-sword, who, with a single backstroke, had cut in sunder two
fierce and mighty giants. He liked yet better Bernardo del Carpio,
who, at Roncesvalles, deprived of life the enchanted Orlando, having
lifted him from the ground, and choked him in the air, as Hercules did
Antaeus, the son of the Earth.

As for the giant Morgante, he always spoke very civil things of him;
for though he was one of that monstrous brood who ever were
intolerably proud and brutish, he still behaved himself like a civil
and well-bred person.

But of all men in the world he admired Rinaldo of Montalban, and
particularly his sallying out of his castle to rob all he met; and
then again when abroad he carried away the idol of Mahomet, which was
all massy gold, as the history says; but he so hated that traitor
Galalon, that for the pleasure of kicking him handsomely, he would
have given up his housekeeper; nay, and his niece into the bargain.

Having thus lost his understanding, he unluckily stumbled upon the
oddest fancy that ever entered into a madman's brain; for now he
thought it convenient and necessary, as well for the increase of his
own honor as the service of the public, to turn knight-errant, and
roam through the whole world, armed cap-a-pie, and mounted on his
steed, in quest of adventures; that thus imitating those
knights-errant of whom he had read, and following their course of
life, redressing all manner of grievances, and exposing himself to
danger on all occasions, at last, after a happy conclusion of his
enterprises, he might purchase everlasting honor and renown.
Transported with these agreeable delusions, the poor gentleman already
grasped in imagination the imperial sceptre of Trebizond, and, hurried
away by his mighty expectations, he prepares with all expedition to
take the field.

The first thing he did was