DON QUIXOTE

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made counts, droll dwarfs, love letters, billings and cooings,
swashbuckler women, and, in a word, all that nonsense the books of
chivalry contain? For myself, I can only say that when I read them, so
long as I do not stop to think that they are all lies and frivolity, they
give me a certain amount of pleasure; but when I come to consider what
they are, I fling the very best of them at the wall, and would fling it
into the fire if there were one at hand, as richly deserving such
punishment as cheats and impostors out of the range of ordinary
toleration, and as founders of new sects and modes of life, and teachers
that lead the ignorant public to believe and accept as truth all the
folly they contain. And such is their audacity, they even dare to
unsettle the wits of gentlemen of birth and intelligence, as is shown
plainly by the way they have served your worship, when they have brought
you to such a pass that you have to be shut up in a cage and carried on
an ox-cart as one would carry a lion or a tiger from place to place to
make money by showing it. Come, Senor Don Quixote, have some compassion
for yourself, return to the bosom of common sense, and make use of the