ones.[1] The moment the housekeeper saw them she turned about and ran out of the room, and came back immediately with a saucer of holy water and a sprinkler, saying, "Here, your worship, señor licentiate, sprinkle this room; don't leave any magician of the many there are in these books to bewitch us in revenge for our design of banishing them from the world."
The simplicity of the housekeeper made the licentiate laugh, and he directed the barber to give him the books one by one to see what they were about, as there might be some to be found among them that did not deserve the penalty of fire.
"No," said the niece, "there is no reason for showing mercy to any of them; they have every one of them done mischief; better fling them out of the window into the court and make a pile of them and set fire to them; or else carry them into the yard, and there a bonfire can be made without the smoke giving any annoyance."[2] The housekeeper said the same, so eager were they for the slaughter of those innocents, but the curate would not agree to it without first reading at any rate the titles.
The first that Master Nicholas put into his hand was the four books of "Amadis of Gaul." "This seems a mysterious thing," said the curate, "for, as I have heard said, this was the first book of chivalry printed in Spain, and from this all the others derive their birth and origin;[3] so it seems to me that we ought inexorably to condemn it to the flames as the founder of so vile a sect."
"Nay, sir," said the barber, "I, too, have heard say that this is the best of all the books of this kind that have been written, and so, as something singular in its line, it ought to be pardoned."
- ↑ The romances of chivalry were, with not more than two or three exceptions, produced in the folio form, while the books of poetry, the pastorals, the cancioneros, and romanceros, were either in small quarto or much more commonly in small octavo corresponding in size with our duodecimo.
- ↑ The court the niece speaks of, was the patio or open space in the middle of the house; the corral or yard was on the outside.
- ↑ The curate was quite correct in his idea that Amadis of Gaul was the parent of the chivalry literature, but not in his statement that it was the first book of the kind printed in Spain, for it is not likely it was printed before Tirant lo Blanch, Oliveros de Castilla, or the Carcel de Amor. The earliest known edition was printed in Rome in 1519, but there can be no doubt that this is a reprint of a Spanish edition, of perhaps even an earlier date than 1510, which has been given as that of the first edition.
