DON QUIXOTE

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  Here, hard or soft, I offer you my breast,
  Whate'er you grave or stamp thereon shall rest
    Indelible for all eternity.

With an "Ah me!" that seemed to be drawn from the inmost recesses of his
heart, the Knight of the Grove brought his lay to an end, and shortly
afterwards exclaimed in a melancholy and piteous voice, "O fairest and
most ungrateful woman on earth! What! can it be, most serene Casildea de
Vandalia, that thou wilt suffer this thy captive knight to waste away and
perish in ceaseless wanderings and rude and arduous toils? It is not
enough that I have compelled all the knights of Navarre, all the Leonese,
all the Tartesians, all the Castilians, and finally all the knights of La
Mancha, to confess thee the most beautiful in the world?"

"Not so," said Don Quixote at this, "for I am of La Mancha, and I have
never confessed anything of the sort, nor could I nor should I confess a
thing so much to the prejudice of my lady's beauty; thou seest how this