'Don Quixote' by Miguel Cervantes
Chapter One excerpt

IN a village of La
Mancha, the name of
which I have no desire to call to mind, there lived not long since one of those
gentlemen that keep a lance in the lance-rack, an old buckler, a lean hack, and
a greyhound for coursing. An olla of rather more beef than mutton, a salad on
most nights, scraps on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, and a pigeon or so extra
on Sundays, made away with three-quarters of his income. The rest of it went in
a doublet of fine cloth and velvet breeches and shoes to match for holidays,
while on week-days he made a brave figure in his best homespun.
He had in his house a housekeeper past
forty, a niece under twenty, and a lad for the field and market-place, who used
to saddle the hack as well as handle the bill-hook. The age of this gentleman of
ours was bordering on fifty; he was of a hardy habit, spare, gaunt-featured, a
very early riser and a great sportsman. They will have it his surname was
Quixada or Quesada (for here there is some difference of opinion among the
authors who write on the subject), although from reasonable conjectures it seems
plain that he was called Quexana. This, however, is of but little importance to
our tale; it will be enough not to stray a hair's breadth from the truth in the
telling of it.
You must know, then, that the
above-named gentleman whenever he was at leisure (which was mostly all the year
round) gave himself up to reading books of chivalry with such ardour and avidity
that he almost entirely neglected the pursuit of his field-sports, and even the
management of his property; and to such a pitch did his eagerness and
infatuation go that he sold many an acre of tillageland to buy books of chivalry
to read, and brought home as many of them as he could get. But of all there were
none he liked so well as those of the famous Feliciano de Silva's composition,
for their lucidity of style and complicated conceits were as pearls in his
sight, particularly when in his reading he came upon courtships and cartels,
where he often found passages like "the reason of the unreason with which
my reason is afflicted so weakens my reason that with reason I murmur at your
beauty;" or again, "the high heavens, that of your divinity divinely
fortify you with the stars, render you deserving of the desert your greatness
deserves." Over conceits of this sort the poor gentleman lost his wits, and
used to lie awake striving to understand them and worm the meaning out of them;
what Aristotle himself could not have made out or extracted had he come to life
again for that special purpose.
Glossary:
- buckler: small, round shield carried or worn on the arm
- hack: horse
- coursing: to hunt with hounds
- olla: a dish of stewed meat
- doublet: a close-fitting jacket (of 15th-17th century)
- bill-hook: a long-handled saw with a curved blade
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