The Project Gutenberg EBook of The History of Don Quixote, Vol. II., Part
29, by Miguel de Cervantes

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Title: The History of Don Quixote, Vol. II., Part 29

Author: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Release Date: July 24, 2004 [EBook #5932]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DON QUIXOTE, PART 29 ***

Produced by David Widger

DON QUIXOTE

Volume II.

Part 29.

by Miguel de Cervantes

Translated by John Ormsby

CHAPTER XXXII.

OF THE REPLY DON QUIXOTE GAVE HIS CENSURER, WITH OTHER INCIDENTS, GRAVE
AND DROLL

Don Quixote, then, having risen to his feet, trembling from head to foot
like a man dosed with mercury, said in a hurried, agitated voice, "The
place I am in, the presence in which I stand, and the respect I have and
always have had for the profession to which your worship belongs, hold
and bind the hands of my just indignation; and as well for these reasons
as because I know, as everyone knows, that a gownsman's weapon is the
same as a woman's, the tongue, I will with mine engage in equal combat
with your worship, from whom one might have expected good advice instead
of foul abuse. Pious, well-meant reproof requires a different demeanour
and arguments of another sort; at any rate, to have reproved me in
public, and so roughly, exceeds the bounds of proper reproof, for that
comes better with gentleness than with rudeness; and it is not seemly to
call the sinner roundly blockhead and booby, without knowing anything of
the sin that is reproved. Come, tell me, for which of the stupidities you
have observed in me do you condemn and abuse me, and bid me go home and
look after my house and wife and children, without knowing whether I have
any? Is nothing more needed than to get a footing, by hook or by crook,
in other people's houses to rule over 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 la