and what honest business you have to do, and leave wandering about the world, building castles in the air, and making yourself a laughing-stock to all that know you, or know you not. Where have you found, in the name of mischief, that there ever has been, or are now, any such things as knights-errant? Where will you meet with giants in Spain, or monsters in La Mancha? Where shall one find your enchanted Dulcineas, and all those legions of whimsies and chimeras that are talked of in your account, but in your own empty skull ?”

Don Quixote gave this reverend person the hearing with great patience. But at last, seeing him silent, without minding his respect to the duke and duchess, up he started with indignation and fury in his looks, and said-But his answer deserves a chapter by itself.

CHAPTER XXXII.

Don Quixote's Answer to his reprover, with other grave and merry Accidents.

DON QUIXOTE being thus suddenly got up, shaking from head to foot for madness, as if he had quicksilver in his bones, cast an angry look on his indiscreet censor, and, with an eager delivery, sputtering and stammering with choler, "This place," cried he, "the presence of these noble persons, and the respect I have always had for your function, check my just resentment, and tie up my hands

from taking the satisfaction of a gentleman. For these reasons, and since every one knows that you gown-men, as well as women, use no other weapons but your tongues, I will fairly engage you upon equal terms, and combat you at your own weapon. I should rather have expected sober admonitions from a man of your cloth, than infamous reproaches. Charitable and wholesome correction ought to be managed at another rate, and with more moderation. The least that can be said of this reproof which you have given me here so bitterly, and in public, is, that it has exceeded the bounds of christian correction, and a gentle one had been much more becoming. Is it fit that, without any insight into the offence which you reprove, you should, without any more ado, call the offender fool, sot, and addle-pate? Pray, sir, what foolish action have you seen me do, that should provoke you to give me such ill language, and bid me so magisterially go home to look after my wife and children, before you know whether I have any? Don't you think those deserve as severe a censure, who screw themselves into other men's houses, and pretend to rule the master? A fine world it is truly, when a poor pedant, who has seen no more of it than lies within twenty or thirty leagues about him, shall take upon him to prescribe laws to knight-errantry, and judge of those who profess it! You, forsooth, esteem it an idle undertaking, and time lost, to wander through the world, though scorning its pleasures, and sharing the hardships and toils of it, by which the virtuous aspire to the high seat of immortality. If per

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sons of honour, knights, lords, gentlemen, or men of any birth, should take me for a fool or a coxcomb, I should think it an irreparable affront. But for mere scholars, that never trod the paths of chivalry, to think me mad, I despise and laugh at it. I am a knight, and a knight will I die, if so it please Omnipotence. Some choose the high road of haughty ambition; others the low ways of base servile flattery; a third sort take the crooked path of deceitful hypocrisy ; and a few, very few, that of true religion. I, for my own part, guided by my stars, follow the narrow track of knight-errantry; and, for the exercise of it, I despise riches, but not honour. I have redressed grievances, and righted the injured, chastised the insolent, vanquished giants, and trod elves and hobgoblins under my feet. I am in love, but no more than the profession of knighterrantry obliges me to be; yet I am none of this age's vicious lovers, but a chaste Platonic. My intentions are all directed to virtuous ends, and to do no man wrong, but good to all the world. And now let your graces judge, most excellent duke and duchess, whether a person who makes it his only study to practice all this, deserves to be upbraided for a fool."

"Well said, i'faith!" quoth Sancho; "say no more for yourself, my good lord and master; stop when you are well; for there is not the least matter to be added more on your side, either in word, Besides, since Mr Parson has

thought, or deed.

had the face to say, point-blank, as one may say, that there neither are, nor ever were, any knights

errant in the world, no marvel he does not know what he says."-"What!" said the clergyman, "I warrant you are that Sancho Panza, to whom they say your master has promised an island ?" "Ay, marry am I," answered Sancho; "and I am he that deserves it as well as another body; and I am one of those of whom they say, Keep with good men, and thou shalt be one of them; and of those of whom it is said again, Not with whom thou wert bred, but with whom thou hast fed; as also, Lean against a good tree, and it will shelter thee. I have leaned and stuck close to my good master, and kept him company this many a month; and now he and I are all one; and I must be as he is, an it be heaven's blessed will; and so he live, and I live, he will not want kingdoms to rule, nor shall I want islands to govern."

"That thou shalt not, honest Sancho," said the duke; "for I, on the great Don Quixote's account, will now give thee the government of an odd one of my own of no small consequence."-" Down, down on thy knees, Sancho," cried Don Quixote, "and kiss his grace's feet for this favour." Sancho did accordingly; but when the clergyman saw it, he got up in a great heat. "By the habit which I wear," cried he, "I can scarce forbear telling your grace, that you are as mad as these sinful wretches. Well may they be mad, when such wise men as you humour and authorize their frenzy. You may keep them here, and stay with them yourself, if your grace pleases; but for my part, I will leave you and go home, to save myself the labour of repre

hending what I can't mend." With that, leaving the rest of his dinner behind him, away he flung, the duke and the duchess not being able to pacify him; though, indeed, the duke could not say much to him, for laughing at his impertinent passion.

When he had done laughing, "Sir Knight of the Lions," said he, "you have answered so well for yourself and your profession, that you need no farther satisfaction of the angry clergyman; especially if you consider, that whatever he might say, it was not in his power to fix an affront on a person of your character, since women and churchmen cannot give an affront."-" Very true, my lord," said Don Quixote ;" and the reason is, because he that cannot receive an affront, consequently can give none. Women, children, and churchmen, as they cannot vindicate themselves when they are injured, so neither are they capable of receiving an affront; for there is this difference betwixt an affront and injury, as your grace very well knows, an affront must come from a person that is both able to give it, and maintain it when he has given it. An injury may be done by any sort of people whatsoever : for example, a man walking in the street about his business, is set upon by ten armed men, who cudgel him. He draws his sword to revenge the injury, but the assailants overpowering him, he cannot have the satisfaction he desired. This man is injured, but not affronted. But to confirm it by another instance, suppose a man comes behind another's back, hits him a box on the ear, and then runs away, the other follows him, but can't overtake him. He that