Page:The History of the Valorous and Wity Knight-Errant, Don-Quixote of the Mancha. Volume three.djvu/36

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waters, will rain as oft as I list and need shall require.' To which quoth the chaplain, 'Nay, Master Neptune, it were not good angering Master Jupiter. I pray stay you here still, and some other time, at more leisure and opportunity, we will return for you again.' The rector and standers-by began to laugh, and the chaplain grew to be half abashed; the bachelor was unclothed, there remained; and there the tale ends."

"Well, is this the tale, master barber," quoth Don Quixote, "that because it fell out so pat you could not but relate it? Ah, goodman shavester, goodman shavester! how blind is he that sees not light through the bottom of a meal-sieve! and is it possible that you should not know that comparisons made betwixt wit and wit, valour and valour, beauty and beauty, and betwixt birth and birth, are always odious, and ill taken ? I am not Neptune, god of the waters, neither care I who thinks me a wise man, I being none; only I am troubled to let the world understand the error it is in, in not renewing that most happy age in which the order of knight-errantry did flourish. But our depraved times deserve not to enjoy so great a happiness as former ages, when knights-errant undertook the defence of kingdoms, the protection of damsels, the succouring of orphans, the chastising the proud, the reward of the humble. Most of your knights nowadays are such as rustle in their silks, their cloth of gold and silver; and such rich stuffs as these they wear rather than mail, with which they should arm themselves. You have no knight now that will lie upon the bare ground, subject to the rigour of the air, armed cap-a-pie; none now that upright on his stirrups, and leaning on his lance, strives to behead sleep, as they say your knights-errant did. You have none now that, coming out of this wood, enters into that