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“That’s true,” said Maritornes, “and by my faith, I really like to hear those things, too, they’re very pretty, especially when they tell about a lady under some orange trees in the arms of her knight, and a duenna’s their lookout, and she’s dying of envy and scared to death. I think all that’s as sweet as honey.”

“And you, young lady, what do you think of them?” asked the priest, speaking to the innkeeper’s daughter.

“Upon my soul, I don’t know, Señor,” she responded. “I listen, too, and the truth is that even if I don’t understand them, I like to hear them, but I don’t like all the fighting that my father likes; I like the laments of the knights when they’re absent from their ladies; the truth is that sometimes they make me cry, I feel so sorry for them.”

“Then, young lady, would you offer them relief,” said Dorotea, “if they were weeping on your account?”

“I don’t know what I’d do,” the girl responded. “All I know is that some of those ladies are so cruel that their knights call them tigers and lions and a thousand other indecent things. And sweet Jesus, I don’t know what kind of people can be so heartless and unfeeling that they don’t look at an honorable man, and let him die or lose his mind. I don’t know the reason for so much stiffness: if they’re so virtuous, let them marry, which is just what their knights want.”

“Be quiet, girl,” said the innkeeper’s wife. “You seem to know a lot about these things, and it’s not right for young girls to know or talk so much.”

“Since the gentleman asked me,” she responded, “I had to answer.”

“Well, now,” said the priest, “innkeeper, bring me those books; I’d like to see them.”

“I’d be glad to,” he responded.

He entered his room and brought out an old traveling case, locked with a small chain, and when it was opened, the priest found three large books and some papers written in a very fine hand. He opened the first book and saw that it was Don Cirongilio of Thrace;1 and the second was Felixmarte of Hyrcania;2 and the third, The History of the Great Captain Gonzalo Hernández de Córdoba, and the Life of Diego García de Paredes.3 As soon as the priest read the first two titles, he turned to the barber and said:

“Our friend’s housekeeper and his niece are the people we need here now.”

“We don’t need them,” responded the barber. “I also know how to take them to the corral or the hearth, where there’s a good fire burning.”

“Then your grace wants to burn my books?” said the innkeeper.

“Only these two,” said the priest: “Don Cirongilio and Felixmarte.”

“Well,” said the innkeeper, “by any chance are my books heretical or phlegmatic, is that why you want to burn them?”

“Schismatic is what you mean, friend,” said the barber, “not phlegmatic.”

“That’s right,” replied the innkeeper. “But if you want to burn one, let it be the one about the Great Captain and that Diego García; I’d rather let a child of mine be burned than either one of the others.”

“Dear brother,” said the priest, “these two books are false and full of foolishness and nonsense, but this one about the Great Captain is truthful history and tells the accomplishments of Gonzalo Hernández de Córdoba, who, because of his many great feats, deserved to be called Great Captain by everyone, a famous and illustrious name deserved by him alone; Diego García de Paredes was a distinguished nobleman, a native of the city of Trujillo, in Extremadura, a very courageous soldier, and so strong that with one finger he could stop a millwheel as it turned; standing with a broadsword at the entrance to a bridge, he brought an immense army to a halt and would not permit them to cross; and he did other comparable things, and he recounts them and writes about them himself, with the modesty of a gentleman writing his own chronicle, but if another were to write about those feats freely and dispassionately, they would relegate all the deeds of Hector, Achilles, and Roland to oblivion.”

“Tell those trifles to my old father!” said the innkeeper. “Look at what amazes you: stopping a millwheel! By God, now your grace ought to read