........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. He was not at all easy about the wounds which Don Belianis gave and took, because it seemed to him that, great as were the surgeons who had cured him, he must have had his face and body covered all over with seams and scars. He commended, however, the author's way of ending his book with the promise of that interminable adventure, and many a time was he tempted to take up his pen and finish it properly as is there proposed, which no doubt he would have done, and made a successful piece of work of it too, had not greater and more absorbing thoughts prevented him. Many an argument did he have with the curate of his village (a learned
man, and a graduate of Siguenza) as to which had been the better knight,
Palmerin of England or Amadis of Gaul. Master Nicholas, the village barber,
however, used to say that neither of them came up to the Knight of Phoebus,
and that if there was any that could compare with him it was Don Galaor,
the brother of Amadis of Gaul, because he had a spirit that was equal
to every occasion, and was no finikin knight, nor lachrymose like his
brother, while in the matter of valour he was not a whit behind him. |
In short, his wits being quite gone, he hit upon the strangest notion
that ever madman in this world hit upon, and that was that he fancied
it was right and requisite, as well for the support of his own honour
as for the service of his country, that he should make a knight-errant
of himself, roaming the world over in full armour and on horseback in
quest of adventures, and putting in practice himself all that he had read
of as being the usual practices of knights-errant; righting every kind
of wrong, and exposing himself to peril and danger from which, in the
issue, he was to reap eternal renown and fame. Already the poor man saw
himself crowned by the might of his arm Emperor of Trebizond at least;
and so, led away by the intense enjoyment he found in these pleasant fancies,
he set himself forthwith to put his scheme into execution......... |