DON QUIXOTE

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that its author inserted in it a novel called 'The Ill-advised
Curiosity;' not that it is bad or ill-told, but that it is out of place
and has nothing to do with the history of his worship Senor Don Quixote."

"I will bet the son of a dog has mixed the cabbages and the baskets,"
said Sancho.

"Then, I say," said Don Quixote, "the author of my history was no sage,
but some ignorant chatterer, who, in a haphazard and heedless way, set
about writing it, let it turn out as it might, just as Orbaneja, the
painter of Ubeda, used to do, who, when they asked him what he was
painting, answered, 'What it may turn out.' Sometimes he would paint a
cock in such a fashion, and so unlike, that he had to write alongside of
it in Gothic letters, 'This is a cock; and so it will be with my history,
which will require a commentary to make it intelligible."

"No fear of that," returned Samson, "for it is so plain that there is