ore
about books of chivalry than I do about Villalpando's elements of logic;
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, I
would have you know that I am held enchanted in this cage by the envy and
fraud of wicked enchanters; for virtue is more persecuted by the wicked
than loved by the good. I am a knight-errant, and not one of those whose
names Fame has never thought of immortalising in her record, but of those
who, in defiance and in spite of envy itself, and all the magicians that
Persia, or Brahmans that India, or Gymnosophists that Ethiopia ever
produced, will place their names in the temple of immortality, to serve
as examples and patterns for ages to come, whereby knights-errant may see
the footsteps in which they must tread if they would attain the summit
and crowning point of honour in arms."

"What Senor Don Quixote of La Mancha says," observed the curate, "is the
truth; for he goes enchanted in this cart, not from any fault or sins of
his, but because of the malevolence of those to whom virtue is odious and
valour hateful. This, senor, is the Knight of the Rueful Countenance, if
you have ever heard him named, whose valiant achievements and mighty
deeds shall be written on lasting brass and imperishable marble,
notwithstanding all the efforts of envy to obscure them and malice to
hide them."

When the canon heard both the prisoner and the man who was at liberty
talk in such a strain he was ready to cross himself in his astonishment,
and could not make out what had befallen him; and all his attendants were
in the same state of amazement.

At this point Sancho Panza, who had drawn near to hear the conversation,
said, in order to make everything plain, "Well, sirs, you may like or
dislike what I am going to say, but the fact of the matter is, my master,
Don Quixote, is just as much enchanted as my mother. He is in his full
senses, he eats and he drinks, and he has his calls like other men and as
he had yesterday, before they caged him. And if that's the case, what do
they mean by wanting me to believe that he is enchanted? For I have heard
many a one say that enchanted people neither eat, nor sleep, nor talk;
and my master, if you don't stop him, will talk more than thirty
lawyers." Then turning 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 see the dr