DON QUIXOTE

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than that you are my sons; and to encourage a suspicion that I do not
love you, no more is needed than the knowledge that I have no
self-control as far as preservation of your patrimony is concerned;
therefore, that you may for the future feel sure that I love you like a
father, and have no wish to ruin you like a stepfather, I propose to do
with you what I have for some time back meditated, and after mature
deliberation decided upon. You are now of an age to choose your line of
life or at least make choice of a calling that will bring you honour and
profit when you are older; and what I have resolved to do is to divide my
property into four parts; three I will give to you, to each his portion
without making any difference, and the other I will retain to live upon
and support myself for whatever remainder of life Heaven may be pleased
to grant me. But I wish each of you on taking possession of the share
that falls to him to follow one of the paths I shall indicate. In this
Spain of ours there is a proverb, to my mind very true--as they all are,
being short aphorisms drawn from long practical experience--and the one I
refer to says, 'The church, or the sea, or the king's house;' as much as