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The life and adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha
The life and adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha Author:Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAP. III. Of the pleasant conversation which passed between Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, and the bachelor, Sampson Carrasco. Don Quixote remained extremely ... more »thoughtful, expecting, with impatience, the coming of the bachelor Carrasco, from whom he hoped to hear an account of himself, published in a book, as Sancho had told him ; though he could hardly persuade himself that such a history could be extant, since the blood of the enemies he had slain was still reeking on his sword-blade; and was it to be supposed, that his high feats of arms should be already in print ? However, he concluded at last, that some sage, either friend or foe, had by magic art sent them to the press; if a friend, to aggrandize and extol them above the most signal achievements of any knight- errant; if an enemy, to annihilate and sink them below the meanest that ever were written of any squire; although, as he recollected, the feats of squires were never written. But should it prove to be fact, that such a history is really extant, since it is the history of a knight-errant, it must of necessity, quoth he to himself, be sublime, lofty, illustrious, magnificent, and true. This thought afforded him some comfort; but he lost it again upon considering, that the author was a Moor, as was evident from thetitle of Cid, and that no truth could be expected from that quarter, the Moors being- all impostors liars and visionaries. He was fearful his amours might be treated with indecency, which might redound to the disparagement and prejudice of the unsullied purity of his lady Dulcinea del Toboso; whereas he wished to find a faithful representation of his own constancy, and the decorum he had inviolably preserved towards her, slighting, for her sake, queens, empresses, and damsels of every degree, and bridling at a...« less