Don Quixote made him rise, and said, "So, then, it is true that there is
a history of me, and that it was a Moor and a sage who wrote it?"
"So true is it, senor," said Samson, "that my belief is there are more
than twelve thousand volumes of the said history in print this very day.
Only ask Portugal, Barcelona, and Valencia, where they have been printed,
and moreover there is a report that it is being printed at Antwerp, and I
am persuaded there will not be a country or language in which there will
not be a translation of it."
"One of the things," here observed Don Quixote, "that ought to give most
pleasure to a virtuous and eminent man is to find himself in his lifetime
in print and in type, familiar in people's mouths with a good name; I say
with a good name, for if it be the opposite, then there is no death to be
compared to it."
"If it goes by good name and fame," said the bachelor, "your worship
alone bears away the palm from all the knights-errant; for the Moor in
his own language, and the Christian in his, have taken care to set before
us your gallantry, your high courage in encountering dangers, your
fortitude in adversity, your patience under misfortunes as well as
wounds, the purity and continence of the platonic loves of your worship
and my lady Dona Dulcinea del Toboso-"
"I never heard my lady Dulcinea called Dona," observed Sancho here;
"nothing more than the lady Dulcinea del Toboso; so here already the
history is wrong."
"That is not an objection of any importance," replied Carrasco.
"Certainly not," said Don Quixote; "but tell me, senor bachelor, what
deeds of mine are they that are made most of in this history?"
"On that point," replied the bachelor, "opinions differ, as tastes do;
some swear by the adventure of the windmills that your worship took to be
Briareuses and giants; others by that of the fulling mills; one cries up
the description of the two armies that afterwards took the appearance of
two droves of sheep; another that of the dead body on its way to be
buried at Segovia; a third says the liberation of the galley slaves is
the best of all, and a fourth that nothing comes up to the affair with
the Benedictine giants, and the battle with the valiant Biscayan."
"Tell me, senor bachelor," said Sancho at this point, "does the adventure
with the Yanguesans come in, when our good Rocinante went hankering after
dainties?"
"The sage has left nothing in the ink-bottle," replied Samson; "he tells
all and sets down everything, even to the capers that worthy Sancho cut
in the blanket."