DON QUIXOTE

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What heart could be so hard as not to be softened by these words, at any
rate so far as to listen to what the unhappy youth had to say? The
general bade him say what he pleased, but not to expect pardon for his
flagrant offence. With this permission the youth began in these words.

"Born of Morisco parents, I am of that nation, more unhappy than wise,
upon which of late a sea of woes has poured down. In the course of our
misfortune I was carried to Barbary by two uncles of mine, for it was in
vain that I declared I was a Christian, as in fact I am, and not a mere
pretended one, or outwardly, but a true Catholic Christian. It availed me
nothing with those charged with our sad expatriation to protest this, nor
would my uncles believe it; on the contrary, they treated it as an
untruth and a subterfuge set up to enable me to remain behind in the land
of my birth; and so, more by force than of my own will, they took me with
them. I had a Christian mother, and a father who was a man of sound sense
and a Christian too; I imbibed the Catholic faith with my mother's milk,
I was well brought up, and neither in word nor in deed did I, I think,