the masters (and that, perhaps,
after having been brought up in all the straitness of some seminary, and
without having ever seen more of the world than may lie within twenty or
thirty leagues round), to fit one to lay down the law rashly for
chivalry, and pass judgment on knights-errant? Is it, haply, an idle
occupation, or is the time ill-spent that is spent in roaming the world
in quest, not of its enjoyments, but of those arduous toils whereby the
good mount upwards to the abodes of everlasting life? If gentlemen, great
lords, nobles, men of high birth, were to rate me as a fool I should take
it as an irreparable insult; but I care not a farthing if clerks who have
never entered upon or trod the paths of chivalry should think me foolish.
Knight I am, and knight I will die, if such be the pleasure of the Most
High. Some take the broad road of overweening ambition; others that of
mean and servile flattery; others that of deceitful hypocrisy, and some
that of true religion; but I, led by my star, follow the narrow path of
knight-errantry, and in pursuit of that calling I despise wealth, but not
honour. I have redressed injuries, righted wrongs, punished insolences,
vanquished giants, and crushed monsters; I am in love, for no other
reason than that it is incumbent on knights-errant to be so; but though I
am, I am no carnal-minded lover, but one of the chaste, platonic sort. My
intentions are always directed to worthy ends, to do good to all and evil
to none; and if he who means this, does this, and makes this his practice
deserves to be called a fool, it is for your highnesses to say, O most
excellent duke and duchess."

"Good, by God!" cried Sancho; "say no more in your own defence, master
mine, for there's nothing more in the world to be said, thought, or
insisted on; and besides, when this gentleman denies, as he has, that
there are or ever have been any knights-errant in the world, is it any
wonder if he knows nothing of what he has been talking about?"

"Perhaps, brother," said the ecclesiastic, "you are that Sancho Panza
that is mentioned, to whom your master has promised an island?"

"Yes, I am," said Sancho, "and what's more, I am one who deserves it as
much as anyone; I am one of the sort--'Attach thyself to the good, and
thou wilt be one of them,' and of those, 'Not with whom thou art bred,
but with whom thou art fed,' and of those, 'Who leans against a good
tree, a good shade covers him;' I have leant upon