n to profane thee.
But ere they touch thee warn them, and, as best thou canst, say to them:

Hold off! ye weaklings; hold your hands!
Adventure it let none,
For this emprise, my lord the king,
Was meant for me alone.

For me alone was Don Quixote born, and I for him; it was his to act, mine
to write; we two together make but one, notwithstanding and in spite of
that pretended Tordesillesque writer who has ventured or would venture
with his great, coarse, ill-trimmed ostrich quill to write the
achievements of my valiant knight;--no burden for his shoulders, nor
subject for his frozen wit: whom, if perchance thou shouldst come to know
him, thou shalt warn to leave at rest where they lie the weary mouldering
bones of Don Quixote, and not to attempt to carry him off, in opposition
to all the privileges of death, to Old Castile, making him rise from the
grave where in reality and truth he lies stretched at full length,
powerless to make any third expedition or new sally; for the two that he
has already made, so much to the enjoyment and approval of everybody to
whom they have become known, in this as well as in foreign countries, are
quite sufficient for the purpose of turning into ridicule the whole of
those made by the whole set of the knights-errant; and so doing shalt
thou discharge thy Christian calling, giving good counsel to one that
bears ill-will to thee. And I shall remain satisfied, and proud to have
been the first who has ever enjoyed the fruit of his writings as fully as
he could desire; for my desire has been no other than to deliver over to
the detestation of mankind the false and foolish tales of the books of
chivalry, which, thanks to that of my true Don Quixote, are even now
tottering, and doubtless doomed to fall for ever. Farewell."

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The History of Don Quixote, Volume
II., Complete, by Miguel de Cervantes

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DON QUIXOTE, VOL. II. ***

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