if you return quickly from the place where I intend to send you, then my suffering will end quickly and my glory will quickly commence. And since it is not right to keep you in suspense, waiting to hear where my words will lead, I want you, Sancho, to know that the famous Amadís of Gaul was one of the most perfect knights errant. I have misspoken: not one of, but the sole, the first, the only, the lord of all those in the world during his lifetime. Bad luck and worse fortune for Don Belianís and for anyone else who may claim to be his equal in anything, because, by my troth, they are deceived. I say, too, that when a painter wishes to win fame in his art, he attempts to copy the original works of the most talented painters he knows; this same rule applies to all the important occupations and professions that serve to embellish nations, and it must be, and is, followed when the man who wishes to be known as prudent and long-suffering imitates Ulysses, in whose person and hardships Homer painted a living portrait of prudence and forbearance; Virgil, too, in the person of Aeneas, portrayed for us the valor of a devoted son and the sagacity of a valiant and experienced captain; they were depicted and described not as they were, but as they should have been, to serve as examples of virtue to men who came after them. In the same manner, Amadís was the polestar, the morning star, the sun to valiant, enamored knights, the one who should be imitated by all of us who serve under the banner of love and chivalry. This being true, and it is, then I deduce, friend Sancho, that the knight errant who most closely imitates Amadís will be closest to attaining chivalric perfection. And one of the things in which this knight most clearly showed his prudence, valor, courage, patience, constancy, and love was when, scorned by the Lady Oriana, he withdrew to do penance on the Peña Pobre,4 calling himself Beltenebros, a name truly significant and suited to the life he voluntarily had chosen. It is, therefore, easier for me to imitate him in this fashion than by cleaving giants in two, beheading serpents, slaying dragons, routing armies, thwarting armadas, and undoing enchantments. And since this terrain is so appropriate for achieving that end, there is no reason not to seize Opportunity by the forelock5 when it is convenient to do so.”
“In fact,” said Sancho, “what is it that your grace wants to do in this lonely place?”
“Have I not told you already,” responded Don Quixote, “that I wish to imitate Amadís, playing the part of one who is desperate, a fool, a madman, thereby imitating as well the valiant Don Roland when he discovered in a fountain the signs that Angelica the Fair had committed base acts with Medoro, and his grief drove him mad, and he uprooted trees, befouled the waters of clear fountains, killed shepherds, destroyed livestock, burned huts, demolished houses, pulled down mares, and did a hundred thousand other unheard-of things worthy of eternal renown and record? And since I do not intend to imitate Roland, or Roldán, or Orlando, or Rotolando (for he had all those names) in every detail of all the mad things he did, said, and thought, I shall, to the best of my ability, sketch an outline of those that seem most essential to me. And it well may be that I shall be content with the imitation solely of Amadís, who, with no harmful mad acts but only outbursts of weeping and grief, achieved as much fame as anyone else.”
“It seems to me,” said Sancho, “that the knights who did these things were provoked and had a reason to do senseless things and penances; but what reason does your grace have for going crazy? What lady has scorned you, and what signs have you found to tell you that my lady Dulcinea of Toboso has done anything foolish with Moor or Christian?”
“Therein lies the virtue,” responded Don Quixote, “and the excellence of my enterprise, for a knight errant deserves neither glory nor thanks if he goes mad for a reason. The great achievement is to lose one’s reason for no reason, and to let my lady know that if I can do this