g he came upon courtships and
cartels, where he often found passages like "the reason of the unreason
with which my reason is afflicted so weakens my reason that with reason I
murmur at your beauty;" or again, "the high heavens, that of your
divinity divinely fortify you with the stars, render you deserving of the
desert your greatness deserves." Over conceits of this sort the poor
gentleman lost his wits, and used to lie awake striving to understand
them and worm the meaning out of them; what Aristotle himself could not
have made out or extracted had he come to life again for that special
purpose. He was not at all easy about the wounds which Don Belianis gave
and took, because it seemed to him that, great as were the surgeons who
had cured him, he must have had his face and body covered all over with
seams and scars. He commended, however, the author's way of ending his
book with the promise of that interminable adventure, and many a time was
he tempted to take up his pen and finish it properly as is there
proposed, which no doubt he would have done, and made a successful piece
of work of it too, had not greater and more absorbing thoughts prevented
him.

Many an argument did he have with the curate of his village (a learned
man, and a graduate of Siguenza) as to which had been the better knight,
Palmerin of England or Amadis of Gaul. Master Nicholas, the village
barber, however, used to say that neither of them came up to the Knight
of Phoebus, and that if there was any that could compare with him it was
Don Galaor, the brother of Amadis of Gaul, because he had a spirit that
was equal to every occasion, and was no finikin knight, nor lachrymose
like his brother, while in the matter of valour he was not a whit behind
him. In short, he became so absorbed in his books that he spent his
nights from sunset to sunrise, and his days from dawn to dark, poring
over them; and what with little sleep and much reading his brains got so
dry that he lost his wits. His fancy grew full of what he used to read
about in his books, enchantments, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds,
wooings, loves, agonies, and all sorts of impossible nonsense; and it so
possessed his mind that the whole fabric of invention and fancy he read
of was true, that to him no history in the world had more reality in it.
He used to say the Cid Ruy Diaz was a very good knight, but that he was
not to be compared with the Knight of the Burning Sword who with one