c lore
Monarch and treasurer, with jealous eye
I view the efforts of the age to hide
The gallant deeds of doughty errant knights,
Who are, and ever have been, dear to me.
Enchanters and magicians and their kind

Are mostly hard of heart; not so am I;
For mine is tender, soft, compassionate,
And its delight is doing good to all.
In the dim caverns of the gloomy Dis,
Where, tracing mystic lines and characters,
My soul abideth now, there came to me
The sorrow-laden plaint of her, the fair,
The peerless Dulcinea del Toboso.
I knew of her enchantment and her fate,
From high-born dame to peasant wench transformed
And touched with pity, first I turned the leaves
Of countless volumes of my devilish craft,
And then, in this grim grisly skeleton
Myself encasing, hither have I come
To show where lies the fitting remedy
To give relief in such a piteous case.
O thou, the pride and pink of all that wear

The adamantine steel! O shining light,
O beacon, polestar, path and guide of all
Who, scorning slumber and the lazy down,
Adopt the toilsome life of bloodstained arms!
To thee, great hero who all praise transcends,
La Mancha's lustre and Iberia's star,
Don Quixote, wise as brave, to thee I say--
For peerless Dulcinea del Toboso
Her pristine form and beauty to regain,
'T is needful that thy esquire Sancho shall,
On his own sturdy buttocks bared to heaven,
Three thousand and three hundred lashes lay,
And that they smart and sting and hurt him well.
Thus have the authors of her woe resolved.
And this is, gentles, wherefore I have come.

"By all that's good," exclaimed Sancho at this, "I'll just as soon give
myself three stabs with a dagger as three, not to say three thousand,
lashes. The devil take such a way of disenchanting! I don't see what my
backside has got to do with enchantments. By God, if Senor Merlin has not
found out some other way of disenchanting the lady Dulcinea del Toboso,
she may go to her grave enchanted."

"But I'll take you, Don Clown stuffed with garlic," said Don Quixote,
"and tie you to a tree as naked as when your mother brought you forth,
and give you, not to say three thousand three hundred, but six thousand
six hundred lashes, and so well laid on that they won't be got rid of if
you try three thousand three hundred times; don't answer me a word or
I'll tear your soul out."

On hearing this Merlin said, "That will not do, for the lashes worthy
Sancho has to receive must be given of his o