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but not so meritorious as arms, whose purpose and objective is peace, which is the greatest good that men can desire in this life. And so, the first good news that the world and men received was brought by angels on the night that was our day, when they sang in the air: ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men,’ and the greeting that the best teacher on earth and in heaven taught His disciples and followers was that when they entered a house they should say: ‘Peace be in this house,’ and often He said to them: ‘My peace I give unto you; my peace I leave with you; peace be with you,’ as if it were a precious jewel when given and offered by that hand, a jewel without which there can be no good on earth or in heaven. This peace is the true purpose of war, and saying arms is the same as saying war. Accepting it is true that the purpose of war is peace, which is greater than the purpose of letters, let us turn now to the physical hardships of the lettered man and those of the man who professes arms, and see which are greater.”

In this manner, and with these rational arguments, Don Quixote continued his discourse, and no one listening to him at that moment could think of him as a madman; rather, since most were gentlemen engaged in the practice of arms, they were very pleased to listen, and he went on, saying:

“I say, then, that the hardships of the student are these: principally poverty, not because they all are poor, but to make this case as extreme as possible, and having said that he suffers poverty, it seems to me that there is nothing more to say about his bad luck, because the man who is poor has nothing that is good. This poverty is suffered in its various forms, in hunger, cold, and nakedness, and sometimes all of them together; even so, his poverty is not so great that he does not eat, although the meal may be a little later than usual, or may be the leftovers of the rich, and his greatest misery is what students call among themselves going for soup;6 and they do not lack someone else’s brazier or hearth, and if it does not warm them, at least it lessens the cold, and at night they sleep under a blanket. I do not wish to discuss other trivial matters, such as a lack of shirts and a shortage of shoes, and clothing that is scant and threadbare, or the relish with which they gorge themselves when fortune offers them a feast. Along this rough and difficult road that I have described, they stumble and fall, pick themselves up and fall again, until they reach the academic title they desire; once this is acquired and they have passed through these shoals, these Scyllas and Charybdises, as if carried on the wings of good fortune, we have seen many who command and govern the world from a chair, their hunger turned into a full belly, their cold into comfort, their nakedness into finery, and their straw mat into linen and damask sheets, the just reward for their virtue. But their hardships, measured against and compared to those of a soldier and warrior, fall far behind, as I shall relate to you now.”

CHAPTER XXXVIII

Which tells of the curious discourse on arms and letters given by Don Quixote

Don Quixote continued, saying:

“We began with the student and the forms of his poverty; now let us see if the soldier is richer. And we shall see that no one in his poverty is as poor as he, for he depends on his miserable pay, which comes late or never, or on whatever he can steal with his own hands at great risk to his life and conscience. Sometimes he is so naked that a slashed and torn doublet is both uniform and shirt, and in the middle of winter, in an empty field, the breath from his mouth is his only protection against the inclemencies of heaven, and since that breath comes from an empty place, I consider it certain that it must come out cold, contradicting the laws of nature. But wait for night to fall, when he can make up for all these discomforts in the bed that awaits him, which will never sin by being too narrow unless he makes it so, for he can measure out as many feet of earth as he desires,