"Ah, senor," here exclaimed the niece, "remember that all this you are
saying about knights-errant is fable and fiction; and their histories, if
indeed they were not burned, would deserve, each of them, to have a
sambenito put on it, or some mark by which it might be known as infamous
and a corrupter of good manners."
"By the God that gives me life," said Don Quixote, "if thou wert not my
full niece, being daughter of my own sister, I would inflict a
chastisement upon thee for the blasphemy thou hast uttered that all the
world should ring with. What! can it be that a young hussy that hardly
knows how to handle a dozen lace-bobbins dares to wag her tongue and
criticise the histories of knights-errant? What would Senor Amadis say if
he heard of such a thing? He, however, no doubt would forgive thee, for
he was the most humble-minded and courteous knight of his time, and
moreover a great protector of damsels; but some there are that might have
heard thee, and it would not have been well for thee in that case; for
they are not all courteous or mannerly; some are ill-conditioned
scoundrels; nor is it everyone that calls himself a gentleman, that is so
in all respects; some are gold, others pinchbeck, and all look like
gentlemen, but not all can stand the touchstone of truth. There are men
of low rank who strain themselves to bursting to pass for gentlemen, and
high gentlemen who, one would fancy, were dying to pass for men of low
rank; the former raise themselves by their ambition or by their virtues,
the latter debase themselves by their lack of spirit or by their vices;
and one has need of experience and discernment to distinguish these two
kinds of gentlemen, so much alike in name and so different in conduct."
"God bless me!" said the niece, "that you should know so much,
uncle--enough, if need be, to get up into a pulpit and go preach in the
streets--and yet that you should fall into a delusion so great and a
folly so manifest as to try to make yourself out vigorous when you are
old, strong when you are sickly, able to put straight what is crooked
when you yourself are bent by age, and, above all, a caballero when you
are not one; for though gentlefolk may be so, poor men are nothing of the
kind!"
"There is a great deal of truth in what you say, niece," returned Don
Quixote, "and I could tell you somewhat about birth that would astonish
you; but, not to mix up things human and divine, I refrain. Look you, my
dears, all the lineages in the world (attend to what I am saying) can be
reduced to four sorts, which are these: those that had humble beginnings,
and went on spreading and extending themselves until they attained
surpassing greatness; those that had great beginnings and maintained
them, and still maintain and uphold the greatness of their origin; those,
again, that from a great beginning have ended in a point like a pyramid,
having reduced and lessened their original greatness till it has come to
nought, like the point of a pyramid, which, relatively to its base or
foundation, is nothing; and then there are those--and it is they that are
the most numerous--that have had neither an illustrious beginning nor a
remarkable mid-course, and so will have an end without a name, like an
ordinary plebeian line. Of the first, those that had an humble origin and
rose to the greatness they still preserve, the Ottoman house may serve as
an example, which from an humble and lowly shepherd, its founder, has
reached the height at which we now see it. For examples of the second
sort of lineage, that began with greatness and maintains it still without
adding to it, there are the many princes who have inherited the dignity,
and maintain themselves in their inheritance, without increasing or
diminishing it, keeping peacefully within the limits of their states. Of
those that began great and ended in a point, there are thousands of
examples, for all the Pharaohs and Ptolemies of Egypt, the Caesars of
Rome, and the whole herd (if I may such a word to them) of countless
princes, monarchs, lords, Medes, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, and
barbarians, all these lineages and lordships have ended in a point and
come to nothing, they themselves as well as their founders, for it would
be impossible now to find one of their descendants, and, even should we
find one, it would be in some lowly and humble condition. Of plebeian
lineages I have nothing to say, save that they merely serve to swell the
number of those that live, without any eminence to entitle them to any
fame or praise beyond this. From all I have said I would have you gather,
my poor innocents, that great is the confusion among lineages, and that
only those are seen to be great and illustrious that show themselves so
by the virtue, wealth, and generosity of their possessors. I have said
virtue, wealth, and generosity, because a great man who is vicious will
be a great example of vice, and a rich man who is not generous will be
merely a miserly beggar; for the possessor of wealth is not made happy by
possessing it, but by spending it, and not by spending as he pleases, but
by knowing how to spend it well. The poor gentleman has no way of showing
that he is a gentleman but by virtue, by being affable, well-bred,
courteous, gentle-mannered, and kindly, not haughty, arrogant, or
censorious, but above all by being charitable; for by two maravedis given
with a cheerful heart to the poor, he will show himself as generous as he
who distributes alms with bell-ringing, and no one that perceives him to
be endowed with the virtues I have named, even though he know him not,
will fail to recognise and set him down as one of good blood; and it
would be strange were it not so; praise has ever been the reward of
virtue, and those who are virtuous cannot fail to receive commendation.
There are two roads, my daughters, by which men may reach wealth and
honours; one is that of letters, the other that of arms. I have more of
arms than of letters in my composition, and, judging by my inclination to
arms, was born under the influence of the planet Mars. I am, therefore,
in a measure constrained to follow that road, and by it I must travel in
spite of all the world, and it will be labour in vain for you to urge me
to resist what heaven wills, fate ordains, reason requires, and, above
all, my own inclination favours; for knowing as I do the countless toils
that are the accompaniments of knight-errantry, I know, too, the infinite
blessings that are attained by it; I know that the path of virtue is very
narrow, and the road of vice broad and spacious; I know their ends and
goals are different, for the broad and easy road of vice ends in death,
and the narrow and toilsome one of virtue in life, and not transitory
life, but in that which has no end; I know, as our great Castilian poet
says, that--