Page:Don Quixote (Cervantes, Ormsby) Volume 1.djvu/161

Rh chivalry, and the first that in our age and in these so evil days devoted himself to the labor and exercise of the arms of knight-errantry, righting wrongs, succoring widows, and protecting damsels of that sort that used to ride about, whip in hand, on their palfreys, with all their virginity about them, from mountain to mountain and valley to valley—for, if it were not for some ruffian, or boor with a hood and hatchet, or monstrous giant, that forced them, there were in days of yore damsels that at the end of eighty years, in all which time they had never slept a day under a roof, went to their graves as much maids as the mothers that bore them. I say, then, that in these and other respects our noble Don Quixote is worthy of everlasting and notable praise, nor should it be withheld even from me for the labor and pains spent in searching for the conclusion of this delightful history; though I know well that if Heaven, chance, and good fortune had not helped me, the world would have remained deprived of an entertainment and pleasure that for a couple of hours or so may well occupy him who shall read it attentively. The discovery of it occurred in this way.

One day, as I was in the Alcaná of Toledo, a boy came up to sell some pamphlets and old papers to a silk mercer, and, as I am fond of reading even the very scraps of paper in the streets, led by this natural bent of mine, I took up one of the pamphlets the boy had for sale, and saw that it was in characters which I recognized as Arabic, and, as I was unable to read them, though I could recognize them, I looked about to see if there were any Spanish-speaking Morisco at hand to read them for me; nor was there any great difficulty in finding such an interpreter, for even had I sought one for an older and better language I should have found him. In short, chance provided me with one, who when I told him what I wanted and put the book into his hands, opened it in the middle, and after reading a little in it began to laugh. I asked him what he was laughing at, and he replied that it was at something the book had written in the margin by way of a note. I bade him tell it to me; and he, still laughing, said: "In the margin, as I told