DON QUIXOTE

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"so he may declare his doubt, for it is not pleasant to have a doubt on
one's conscience."

"Well then, with that permission," said the curate, "I say my doubt is
that, all I can do, I cannot persuade myself that the whole pack of
knights-errant you, Senor Don Quixote, have mentioned, were really and
truly persons of flesh and blood, that ever lived in the world; on the
contrary, I suspect it to be all fiction, fable, and falsehood, and
dreams told by men awakened from sleep, or rather still half asleep."

"That is another mistake," replied Don Quixote, "into which many have
fallen who do not believe that there ever were such knights in the world,
and I have often, with divers people and on divers occasions, tried to
expose this almost universal error to the light of truth. Sometimes I
have not been successful in my purpose, sometimes I have, supporting it
upon the shoulders of the truth; which truth is so clear that I can
almost say I have with my own eyes seen Amadis of Gaul, who was a man of