DON QUIXOTE

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chivalry, and pass judgment on knights-errant? Is it, haply, an idle
occupation, or is the time ill-spent that is spent in roaming the world
in quest, not of its enjoyments, but of those arduous toils whereby the
good mount upwards to the abodes of everlasting life? If gentlemen, great
lords, nobles, men of high birth, were to rate me as a fool I should take
it as an irreparable insult; but I care not a farthing if clerks who have
never entered upon or trod the paths of chivalry should think me foolish.
Knight I am, and knight I will die, if such be the pleasure of the Most
High. Some take the broad road of overweening ambition; others that of
mean and servile flattery; others that of deceitful hypocrisy, and some
that of true religion; but I, led by my star, follow the narrow path of
knight-errantry, and in pursuit of that calling I despise wealth, but not
honour. I have redressed injuries, righted wrongs, punished insolences,
vanquished giants, and crushed monsters; I am in love, for no other
reason than that it is incumbent on knights-errant to be so; but though I
am, I am no carnal-minded lover, but one of the chaste, platonic sort. My
intentions are always directed to worthy ends, to do good to all and evil