olds good for all the most important crafts and callings that serve to
adorn a state; thus must he who would be esteemed prudent and patient
imitate Ulysses, in whose person and labours Homer presents to us a
lively picture of prudence and patience; as Virgil, too, shows us in the
person of AEneas the virtue of a pious son and the sagacity of a brave
and skilful captain; not representing or describing them as they were,
but as they ought to be, so as to leave the example of their virtues to
posterity. In the same way Amadis was the polestar, day-star, sun of
valiant and devoted knights, whom all we who fight under the banner of
love and chivalry are bound to imitate. This, then, being so, I consider,
friend Sancho, that the knight-errant who shall imitate him most closely
will come nearest to reaching the perfection of chivalry. Now one of the
instances in which this knight most conspicuously showed his prudence,
worth, valour, endurance, fortitude, and love, was when he withdrew,
rejected by the Lady Oriana, to do penance upon the Pena Pobre, changing
his name into that of Beltenebros, a name assuredly significant and
appropriate to the life which he had voluntarily adopted. So, as it is
easier for me to imitate him in this than in cleaving giants asunder,
cutting off serpents' heads, slaying dragons, routing armies, destroying
fleets, and breaking enchantments, and as this place is so well suited
for a similar purpose, I must not allow the opportunity to escape which
now so conveniently offers me its forelock."

"What is it in reality," said Sancho, "that your worship means to do in
such an out-of-the-way place as this?"

"Have I not told thee," answered Don Quixote, "that I mean to imitate
Amadis here, playing the victim of despair, the madman, the maniac, so as
at the same time to imitate the valiant Don Roland, when at the fountain
he had evidence of the fair Angelica having disgraced herself with Medoro
and through grief thereat went mad, and plucked up trees, troubled the
waters of the clear springs, slew destroyed flocks, burned down huts,
levelled houses, dragged mares after him, and perpetrated a hundred
thousand other outrages worthy of everlasting renown and record? And
though I have no intention of imitating Roland, or Orlando, or Rotolando
(for he went by all these names), step by step in all the mad things he
did, said, and thought, I will make a rough copy to the best of my power
of all that seems to me