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“That would be performing miracles,” responded Sansón.

“Miracles or no miracles,” said Sancho, “each man should be careful how he talks or writes about people and not put down willy-nilly the first thing that comes into his head.”

“One of the objections people make to the history,” said the bachelor, “is that its author put into it a novel called The Man Who Was Recklessly Curious, not because it is a bad novel or badly told, but because it is out of place and has nothing to do with the history of his grace Señor Don Quixote.”

“I’ll bet,” replied Sancho, “that the dogson mixed up apples and oranges.”

“Now I say,” said Don Quixote, “that the author of my history was no wise man but an ignorant gossip-monger who, without rhyme or reason, began to write, not caring how it turned out, just like Orbaneja, the painter of Úbeda, who, when asked what he was painting, replied: ‘Whatever comes out.’ Perhaps he painted a rooster in such a fashion and so unrealistically that he had to write beside it, in capital letters: ‘This is a rooster.’ And that must be how my history is: a commentary will be necessary in order to understand it.”

“Not at all,” responded Sansón, “because it is so clear that there is nothing in it to cause difficulty: children look at it, youths read it, men understand it, the old celebrate it, and, in short, it is so popular and so widely read and so well-known by every kind of person that as soon as people see a skinny old nag they say: ‘There goes Rocinante.’ And those who have been fondest of reading it are the pages. There is no lord’s antechamber where one does not find a copy of Don Quixote: as soon as it is put down it is picked up again; some rush at it, and others ask for it. In short, this history is the most enjoyable and least harmful entertainment ever seen, because nowhere in it can one find even the semblance of an untruthful word or a less than Catholic thought.”

“Writing in any other fashion,” said Don Quixote, “would mean not writing truths, but lies, and historians who make use of lies ought to be burned, like those who make counterfeit money; I do not know what moved the author to resort to other people’s novels and stories when there was so much to write about mine: no doubt he must have been guided by the proverb that says: ‘Straw or hay, it’s the same either way.’ For the truth is that if he had concerned himself only with my thoughts, my sighs, my tears, my virtuous desires, and my brave deeds, he could have had a volume larger than, or just as large as, the collected works of EI Tostado.4 In fact, as far as I can tell, Señor Bachelor, in order to write histories and books of any kind, one must have great judgment and mature understanding. To say witty things and to write cleverly requires great intelligence: the most perceptive character in a play is the fool, because the man who wishes to seem simple cannot possibly be a simpleton. History is like a sacred thing; it must be truthful, and wherever truth is, there God is; but despite this, there are some who write and toss off books as if they were fritters.”

“There is no book so bad,” said the bachelor, “that it does not have something good in it.”

“There is no doubt about that,” replied Don Quixote, “but it often happens that those who had deservedly won and achieved great fame because of their writings lost their fame, or saw it diminished, when they had their works printed.”

“The reason for that,” said Sansón, “is that since printed works are looked at slowly, their faults are easily seen, and the greater the fame of their authors, the more closely they are scrutinized. Men who are famous for their talent, great poets, eminent historians, are always, or almost always, envied by those whose particular pleasure and entertainment is judging other people’s writings without ever having brought anything of their own into the light of day.”

“That is not surprising,” said Don Quixote, “for there are many theologians who are not good in the pulpit but are excellent at recognizing the lacks or excesses of those who preach.