jot from the truth.

In fine, his judgment being completely obscured, he was seized with one
of the strangest fancies that ever entered the head of any madman; this
was, a belief that it behooved him, as well for the advancement of his
glory as the service of his country, to become a knight-errant, and
traverse the world, armed and mounted, in quest of adventures, and to
practice all that had been performed by knights-errant of whom he had
read; redressing every species of grievance, and exposing himself to
dangers, which, being surmounted, might secure to him eternal glory and
renown. The poor gentleman imagined himself at least crowned Emperor of
Trebisond, by the valor of his arm; and thus wrapped in these agreeable
delusions and borne away by the extraordinary pleasure he found in them,
he hastened to put his designs into execution.

The first thing he did was to scour up some rusty armor which had been
his great-grandfather's, and had lain many years neglected in a corner.
This he cleaned and adjusted as well as he could; but he found one grand
defect,--the helmet was incomplete, having only the morion. This
deficiency, however, he ingeniously supplied by making a kind of visor
of pasteboard, which, being fixed to the morion, gave the appearance of
an entire helmet. It is true, indeed, that, in order to prove its
strength, he drew his sword, and gave it two strokes, the first of which
instantly demolished the labor of a week; but not altogether approving
of the facility with which it was destroyed, and in order to secure
himself against a similar misfortune, he made another visor, which,
having fenced in the inside with small bars of iron, he felt assured of
its strength, and, without making any more experiments, held it to be a
most excellent helmet.

In the next place he visited his steed; and although this animal had
more blemishes than the horse of Gonela, which, "_tantum pellis et ossa
fuit_," yet, in his eyes, neither the Bucephalus of Alexander nor the
Cid's Babieca, could be compared with him. Four days was he deliberating
upon what name he should give him; for, as he said to himself, it would
be very improper that a horse so excellent, appertaining to a knight so
famous, should be without an appropriate name; he therefore endeavored
to find one that should express what he had been before he belonged to a
knight-errant, and also what he now was: nothing could, indeed, be more
reasonable than that, when t