got his lance ready, brought his buckler before his breast, and planting himself in the middle of the road, stood waiting the approach of these knights-errant, for such he now considered and held them to be; and when they had come near enough to see and hear, he exclaimed with a haughty gesture, "All the world stand, unless all the world confess that in all the world there is no maiden fairer than the Empress of La Mancha, the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso."
The traders halted at the sound of this language and the sight of the strange figure that uttered it, and from both figure and language at once guessed the craze of their owner; they wished, however, to learn quietly what was the object of this confession that was demanded of them, and one of them, who was rather fond of a joke and was very sharp-witted, said to him, "Sir Knight, we do not know who this good lady is that you speak of; show her to us, for, if she be of such beauty as you suggest, with all our hearts and without any pressure we will confess the truth that is on your part required of us."
"If I were to show her to you," replied Don Quixote, "what merit would you have in confessing a truth so manifest? The essential point is that without seeing her you must believe, confess, affirm, swear, and defend it;[1] else ye have to do with me in battle, ill-conditioned, arrogant rabble that ye are; and come ye on, one by one as the order of knighthood requires, or all together as is the custom and vile usage of your breed, here do I bide and await you, relying on the justice of the cause I maintain."
"Sir Knight," replied the trader, "I entreat your worship in the name of this present company of princes, that, to save us from charging our consciences with the confession of a thing we have never seen or heard of, and one moreover so much to the prejudice of the Empresses and Queens of the Alcarria and Estremadura,[2] your worship will be pleased to show us some portrait of this lady, though it be no bigger than a grain of
- ↑ It is strange that this passage should have escaped the notice of those ingenious critics whose mania it is to hunt for hidden meanings in Don Quixote. With a moderate amount of acumen it ought to be easy to extract from these words a manifest "covert attack" on Church, Faith, and Dogma.
- ↑ The Alcarria is a bare, thinly populated district, in the upper valley of the Tagus, stretching from Guadalajara to the confines of Aragon. Estremadura is the most backward of all the provinces of Spain. In elevating these two regions into the rank of empires, the waggish trader falls in with the craze of Don Quixote.
