e seemed to have a retentive memory,
to describe and portray to her the beauty and features of the lady
Dulcinea del Toboso, for, judging by what fame trumpeted abroad of her
beauty, she felt sure she must be the fairest creature in the world, nay,
in all La Mancha.

Don Quixote sighed on hearing the duchess's request, and said, "If I
could pluck out my heart, and lay it on a plate on this table here before
your highness's eyes, it would spare my tongue the pain of telling what
can hardly be thought of, for in it your excellence would see her
portrayed in full. But why should I attempt to depict and describe in
detail, and feature by feature, the beauty of the peerless Dulcinea, the
burden being one worthy of other shoulders than mine, an enterprise
wherein the pencils of Parrhasius, Timantes, and Apelles, and the graver
of Lysippus ought to be employed, to paint it in pictures and carve it in
marble and bronze, and Ciceronian and Demosthenian eloquence to sound its
praises?"

"What does Demosthenian mean, Senor Don Quixote?" said the duchess; "it
is a word I never heard in all my life."

"Demosthenian eloquence," said Don Quixote, "means the eloquence of
Demosthenes, as Ciceronian means that of Cicero, who were the two most
eloquent orators in the world."

"True," said the duke; "you must have lost your wits to ask such a
question. Nevertheless, Senor Don Quixote would greatly gratify us if he
would depict her to us; for never fear, even in an outline or sketch she
will be something to make the fairest envious."

"I would do so certainly," said Don Quixote, "had she not been blurred to
my mind's eye by the misfortune that fell upon her a short time since,
one of such a nature that I am more ready to weep over it than to
describe it. For your highnesses must know that, going a few days back to
kiss her hands and receive her benediction, approbation, and permission
for this third sally, I found her altogether a different being from the
one I sought; I found her enchanted and changed from a princess into a
peasant, from fair to foul, from an angel into a devil, from fragrant to
pestiferous, from refined to clownish, from a dignified lady into a
jumping tomboy, and, in a word, from Dulcinea del Toboso into a coarse
Sayago wench."

"God bless me!" said the duke aloud at this, "who can have done the world
such an injury? Who can have robbed it of the beauty that gladdened it,
of the grace and gaiety that charmed it, o