Miguel Cervantes

THE HISTORY OF DON QUIXOTE DE LA MANCHA
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CHAPTER I.

The quality and way of living of Don Quixote.

In a certain village in La Mancha, in the kingdom of Arragon, of which I cannot remember the name, there lived not long ago one of those old-fashioned gentlemen, who are never without a lance upon a rack, an old target, a lean horse, and a greyhound. His diet consisted more of beef than mutton; and, with minced meat on most nights, lentiles on Fridays, and a pigeon extraordinary on Sundays, he consumed three quarters of his revenue; the rest was laid out in a plush coat, velvet breeches, with slippers of the same, for holydays; and a suit of the very best homespun cloth, which he bestowed on himself for working-days. His whole family was a housekeeper something turned of forty, a niece not twenty, and a man that served him in the house and in the field, and could saddle a horse, and handle the pruning-hook. The master himself was nigh fifty years of age, of a hale and strong complexion, lean-bodied and thin-faced, an early riser, and a lover of hunting. Some say his sirname was Quixada, or Quesada (for authors differ in this particular); however, we may reasonably conjecture, he was called Quixada (i.e. lantern-jaws), though this concerns us but little, provided we keep strictly to the truth in every point of this history.

Be it known, then, that when our gentleman had nothing to do (which was almost all the year round), he passed his time in reading books of knight-errantry, which he did with that application and delight, that at last he in a manner wholly left off his [Pg 2] country sports, and even the care of his estate; nay, he grew so strangely enamoured of these amusements, that he sold many acres of land to purchase books of that kind, by which means he collected as many of them as he could; but none pleased him like the works of the famous Feliciano de Sylva; for the brilliancy of his prose, and those intricate expressions with which it is interlaced seemed to him so many pearls of eloquence, especially when he came to read the love-addresses and challenges; many of them in this extraordinary style. "The reason of your unreasonable usage of my reason, does so enfeeble my reason, that I have reason to expostulate with your beauty." And this, "The sublime heavens, which with your divinity divinely fortify you with the stars, and fix you the deserver of the desert that is deserved by your grandeur." These, and such-like rhapsodies, strangely puzzled the poor gentleman's understanding, while he was racking his brain to unravel their meaning, which Aristotle himself could never have found, though he should have been raised from the dead for that very purpose.

He did not so well like those dreadful wounds which Don Belianis gave and received; for he considered that all the art of surgery could never secure his face and body from being strangely disfigured (...)

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