DON QUIXOTE

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vagaries as of the fame of her beauty. She treated with scorn a thousand
gentlemen, men of valour and wisdom, and took up with a smooth-faced
sprig of a page, without fortune or fame, except such reputation for
gratitude as the affection he bore his friend got for him. The great poet
who sang her beauty, the famous Ariosto, not caring to sing her
adventures after her contemptible surrender (which probably were not over
and above creditable), dropped her where he says:

How she received the sceptre of Cathay,
Some bard of defter quill may sing some day;

and this was no doubt a kind of prophecy, for poets are also called
vates, that is to say diviners; and its truth was made plain; for since
then a famous Andalusian poet has lamented and sung her tears, and
another famous and rare poet, a Castilian, has sung her beauty."

"Tell me, Senor Don Quixote," said the barber here, "among all those who