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Don Quijote de la Mancha himself could scarcely have made a more pure-intentioned yet more unpractical President.
These innumerable pastures and wheat-fields are in New Castile, and before long more distinctively they are in La Mancha, the country dear to fame as the home of Don Quixote. I must own at once it does not look it, or at least look like the country I had read out of his history in my boyhood.
At last some of the physical agony of the Knight of the Mirrors was stilled by a quack, whom they found in a town along the road. Tom Cecial, the squire for a day and a night, had been cured of knight-errantry and returned to his less venturesome occupation in his La Mancha village; but the thoughts of evilness would not leave his master, who stayed behind, bent on having his revenge.
But that is a solid and substantial benefit, of which we have derived some good consequences already; for, strange to say, I have contrived with the little British army to keep everything in check since the month of August last; and if the Spaniards had not contrived, by their own folly and against my entreaties and remonstrances, to lose an army in La Mancha about a fortnight ago, I think we might have brought them through the contest; as it is, however, I do not despair.
"What Senor Don Quixote of La Mancha says," observed the curate, "is the truth; for he goes enchanted in this cart, not from any fault or sins of his, but because of the malevolence of those to whom virtue is odious and valour hateful.
Sancho had hardly uttered these words when two gentlemen, for such they seemed to be, entered the room, and one of them, throwing his arms round Don Quixote's neck, said to him, "Your appearance cannot leave any question as to your name, nor can your name fail to identify your appearance; unquestionably, senor, you are the real Don Quixote of La Mancha, cynosure and morning star of knight-errantry, despite and in defiance of him who has sought to usurp your name and bring to naught your achievements, as the author of this book which I here present to you has done;" and with this he put a book which his companion carried into the hands of Don Quixote, who took it, and without replying began to run his eye over it; but he presently returned it saying, "In the little I have seen I have discovered three things in this author that deserve to be censured.
A troop of horsemen in extravagant liveries rode past them, where they were standing, and suddenly Don Quixote was startled by hearing some one call out in a loud voice: "Welcome to our city, mirror, beacon, star and cynosure of all knight-errantry in its widest extent! Welcome, I say, valiant Don Quixote of La Mancha!
How glorious was that right hand is known to all readers of El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. The losses at the battle of Lepanto are something so prodigious that imagination boggles at them. It is said that the Christians lost five thousand men and the Turks no less than thirty thousand. Enormous as these numbers are, they represent probably a very conservative estimate of the loss.
But then ensued the best part of the comedy: my visitors chanced to be natives of three different places; one was of Seville, another of Utrera, and the third of Miguel Turra, a miserable village in La Mancha. At the mention of Seville, the other two instantly began to sing the praises of their respective places of birth; this brought on comparisons, and a violent dispute was the consequence.
The gallant combatant came well primed by his master the duke as to how he was to bear himself against the valiant Don Quixote of La Mancha; being warned that he must on no account slay him, but strive to shirk the first encounter so as to avoid the risk of killing him, as he was sure to do if he met him full tilt.
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