hat she is living to-day, and that she is beautiful and
nobly born and deserves to have such a knight as Senor Don Quixote in her
service, and that is the highest praise that it is in my power to give
her or that I can think of. But I cannot help entertaining a doubt, and
having a certain grudge against Sancho Panza; the doubt is this, that the
aforesaid history declares that the said Sancho Panza, when he carried a
letter on your worship's behalf to the said lady Dulcinea, found her
sifting a sack of wheat; and more by token it says it was red wheat; a
thing which makes me doubt the loftiness of her lineage."

To this Don Quixote made answer, "Senora, your highness must know that
everything or almost everything that happens me transcends the ordinary
limits of what happens to other knights-errant; whether it be that it is
directed by the inscrutable will of destiny, or by the malice of some
jealous enchanter. Now it is an established fact that all or most famous
knights-errant have some special gift, one that of being proof against
enchantment, another that of being made of such invulnerable flesh that
he cannot be wounded, as was the famous Roland, one of the twelve peers
of France, of whom it is related that he could not be wounded except in
the sole of his left foot, and that it must be with the point of a stout
pin and not with any other sort of weapon whatever; and so, when Bernardo
del Carpio slew him at Roncesvalles, finding that he could not wound him
with steel, he lifted him up from the ground in his arms and strangled
him, calling to mind seasonably the death which Hercules inflicted on
Antaeus, the fierce giant that they say was the son of Terra. I would
infer from what I have mentioned that perhaps I may have some gift of
this kind, not that of being invulnerable, because experience has many
times proved to me that I am of tender flesh and not at all impenetrable;
nor that of being proof against enchantment, for I have already seen
myself thrust into a cage, in which all the world would not have been
able to confine me except by force of enchantments. But as I delivered
myself from that one, I am inclined to believe that there is no other
that can hurt me; and so, these enchanters, seeing that they cannot exert
their vile craft against my person, revenge themselves on what I love
most, and seek to rob me of life by maltreating that of Dulcinea in whom
I live; and therefore I am convinced that when my squire