in a
cage, and that it would be better for me to reform and change my studies,
and read other truer books which would afford more pleasure and
instruction."

"Just so," said the canon.

"Well then," returned Don Quixote, "to my mind it is you who are the one
that is out of his wits and enchanted, as you have ventured to utter such
blasphemies against a thing so universally acknowledged and accepted as
true that whoever denies it, as you do, deserves the same punishment
which you say you inflict on the books that irritate you when you read
them. For to try to persuade anybody that Amadis, and all the other
knights-adventurers with whom the books are filled, never existed, would
be like trying to persuade him that the sun does not yield light, or ice
cold, or earth nourishment. What wit in the world can persuade another
that the story of the Princess Floripes and Guy of Burgundy is not true,
or that of Fierabras and the bridge of Mantible, which happened in the
time of Charlemagne? For by all that is good it is as true as that it is
daylight now; and if it be a lie, it must be a lie too that there was a
Hector, or Achilles, or Trojan war, or Twelve Peers of France, or Arthur
of England, who still lives changed into a raven, and is unceasingly
looked for in his kingdom. One might just as well try to make out that
the history of Guarino Mezquino, or of the quest of the Holy Grail, is
false, or that the loves of Tristram and the Queen Yseult are apocryphal,
as well as those of Guinevere and Lancelot, when there are persons who
can almost remember having seen the Dame Quintanona, who was the best
cupbearer in Great Britain. And so true is this, that I recollect a
grandmother of mine on the father's side, whenever she saw any dame in a
venerable hood, used to say to me, 'Grandson, that one is like Dame
Quintanona,' from which I conclude that she must have known her, or at
least had managed to see some portrait of her. Then who can deny that the
story of Pierres and the fair Magalona is true, when even to this day may
be seen in the king's armoury the pin with which the valiant Pierres
guided the wooden horse he rode through the air, and it is a trifle
bigger than the pole of a cart? And alongside of the pin is Babieca's
saddle, and at Roncesvalles there is Roland's horn, as large as a large
beam; whence we may infer that there were Twelve Peers, and a Pierres,
and a Cid, and other knights like them, of the sort people common