n Quixote overheard the conversation and said, "Haply, gentlemen, you
are versed and learned in matters of errant chivalry? Because if you are
I will tell you my misfortunes; if not, there is no good in my giving
myself the trouble of relating them;" but here the curate and the barber,
seeing that the travellers were engaged in conversation with Don Quixote,
came forward, in order to answer in such a way as to save their stratagem
from being discovered.

The canon, replying to Don Quixote, said, "In truth, brother, I know more
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