DON QUIXOTE

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and folly than wanting to fight lions tooth and nail?"

Don Quixote roused him from these reflections and this soliloquy by
saying, "No doubt, Senor Don Diego de Miranda, you set me down in your
mind as a fool and a madman, and it would be no wonder if you did, for my
deeds do not argue anything else. But for all that, I would have you take
notice that I am neither so mad nor so foolish as I must have seemed to
you. A gallant knight shows to advantage bringing his lance to bear
adroitly upon a fierce bull under the eyes of his sovereign, in the midst
of a spacious plaza; a knight shows to advantage arrayed in glittering
armour, pacing the lists before the ladies in some joyous tournament, and
all those knights show to advantage that entertain, divert, and, if we
may say so, honour the courts of their princes by warlike exercises, or
what resemble them; but to greater advantage than all these does a
knight-errant show when he traverses deserts, solitudes, cross-roads,
forests, and mountains, in quest of perilous adventures, bent on bringing
them to a happy and successful issue, all to win a glorious and lasting