h a way that what is said of me gives no offence;
for, on the faith of a true squire, if he had said anything about me that
was at all unbecoming an old Christian, such as I am, the deaf would have
heard of it."

"That would be working miracles," said Samson.

"Miracles or no miracles," said Sancho, "let everyone mind how he speaks
or writes about people, and not set down at random the first thing that
comes into his head."

"One of the faults they find with this history," said the bachelor, "is
that its author inserted in it a novel called 'The Ill-advised
Curiosity;' not that it is bad or ill-told, but that it is out of place
and has nothing to do with the history of his worship Senor Don Quixote."

"I will bet the son of a dog has mixed the cabbages and the baskets,"
said Sancho.

"Then, I say," said Don Quixote, "the author of my history was no sage,
but some ignorant chatterer, who, in a haphazard and heedless way, set
about writing it, let it turn out as it might, just as Orbaneja, the
painter of Ubeda, used to do, who, when they asked him what he was
painting, answered, 'What it may turn out.' Sometimes he would paint a
cock in such a fashion, and so unlike, that he had to write alongside of
it in Gothic letters, 'This is a cock; and so it will be with my history,
which will require a commentary to make it intelligible."

"No fear of that," returned Samson, "for it is so plain that there is
nothing in it to puzzle over; the children turn its leaves, the young
people read it, the grown men understand it, the old folk praise it; in a
word, it is so thumbed, and read, and got by heart by people of all
sorts, that the instant they see any lean hack, they say, 'There goes
Rocinante.' And those that are most given to reading it are the pages,
for there is not a lord's ante-chamber where there is not a 'Don Quixote'
to be found; one takes it up if another lays it down; this one pounces
upon it, and that begs for it. In short, the said history is the most
delightful and least injurious entertainment that has been hitherto seen,
for there is not to be found in the whole of it even the semblance of an
immodest word, or a thought that is other than Catholic."

"To write in any other way," said Don Quixote, "would not be to write
truth, but falsehood, and historians who have recourse to falsehood ought
to be burned, like those who coin false money; and I know not what could
have led the author to have recourse to nove