s of Julius Caesar's body were
placed on the top of a stone pyramid of vast size, which they now call in
Rome Saint Peter's needle. The emperor Hadrian had for a tomb a castle as
large as a good-sized village, which they called the Moles Adriani, and
is now the castle of St. Angelo in Rome. The queen Artemisia buried her
husband Mausolus in a tomb which was reckoned one of the seven wonders of
the world; but none of these tombs, or of the many others of the
heathens, were ornamented with winding-sheets or any of those other
offerings and tokens that show that they who are buried there are
saints."

"That's the point I'm coming to," said Sancho; "and now tell me, which is
the greater work, to bring a dead man to life or to kill a giant?"

"The answer is easy," replied Don Quixote; "it is a greater work to bring
to life a dead man."

"Now I have got you," said Sancho; "in that case the fame of them who
bring the dead to life, who give sight to the blind, cure cripples,
restore health to the sick, and before whose tombs there are lamps
burning, and whose chapels are filled with devout folk on their knees
adoring their relics be a better fame in this life and in the other than
that which all the heathen emperors and knights-errant that have ever
been in the world have left or may leave behind them?"

"That I grant, too," said Don Quixote.

"Then this fame, these favours, these privileges, or whatever you call
it," said Sancho, "belong to the bodies and relics of the saints who,
with the approbation and permission of our holy mother Church, have
lamps, tapers, winding-sheets, crutches, pictures, eyes and legs, by
means of which they increase devotion and add to their own Christian
reputation. Kings carry the bodies or relics of saints on their
shoulders, and kiss bits of their bones, and enrich and adorn their
oratories and favourite altars with them."

"What wouldst thou have me infer from all thou hast said, Sancho?" asked
Don Quixote.

"My meaning is," said Sancho, "let us set about becoming saints, and we
shall obtain more quickly the fair fame we are striving after; for you
know, senor, yesterday or the day before yesterday (for it is so lately
one may say so) they canonised and beatified two little barefoot friars,
and it is now reckoned the greatest good luck to kiss or touch the iron
chains with which they girt and tortured their bodies, and they are held
in greater veneration, so it is said, than the sword o