stian."

"You are very right, friend," said the curate; "but for all that, if the
novel pleases me you must let me copy it."

"With all my heart," replied the host.

While they were talking Cardenio had taken up the novel and begun to read
it, and forming the same opinion of it as the curate, he begged him to
read it so that they might all hear it.

"I would read it," said the curate, "if the time would not be better
spent in sleeping."

"It will be rest enough for me," said Dorothea, "to while away the time
by listening to some tale, for my spirits are not yet tranquil enough to
let me sleep when it would be seasonable."

"Well then, in that case," said the curate, "I will read it, if it were
only out of curiosity; perhaps it may contain something pleasant."

Master Nicholas added his entreaties to the same effect, and Sancho too;
seeing which, and considering that he would give pleasure to all, and
receive it himself, the curate said, "Well then, attend to me everyone,
for the novel begins thus."

CHAPTER XXXIII.

IN WHICH IS RELATED THE NOVEL OF "THE ILL-ADVISED CURIOSITY"

In Florence, a rich and famous city of Italy in the province called
Tuscany, there lived two gentlemen of wealth and quality, Anselmo and
Lothario, such great friends that by way of distinction they were called
by all that knew them "The Two Friends." They were unmarried, young, of
the same age and of the same tastes, which was enough to account for the
reciprocal friendship between them. Anselmo, it is true, was somewhat
more inclined to seek pleasure in love than Lothario, for whom the
pleasures of the chase had more attraction; but on occasion Anselmo would
forego his own tastes to yield to those of Lothario, and Lothario would
surrender his to fall in with those of Anselmo, and in this way their
inclinations kept pace one with the other with a concord so perfect that
the best regulated clock could not surpass it.

Anselmo was deep in love with a high-born and beautiful maiden of the
same city, the daughter of parents so estimable, and so estimable
herself, that he resolved, with the approval of his friend Lothario,
without whom he did nothing, to ask her of them in marriage, and did so,
Lothario being the bearer of the demand, and conducting the negotiation
so much to the satisfaction of his friend that in a short time he was in
possession of the object of his desires, and Camilla so happy in having
won Anselmo for her hus