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“Have your graces not read,” responded Don Quixote, “the annals and histories of England, in which are recounted the famous deeds of King Arthur, whom, in our Castilian ballads, we continuously call King Artús? According to an ancient and widespread tradition throughout the kingdom of Great Britain, this king did not die but, through the art of enchantment, was turned into a crow and in time will return to rule and recover his kingdom and scepter; for this reason, it can be demonstrated that no Englishman has ever killed a crow from that time to this. Well, it was in the days of this good king that the famous chivalric order of the Knights of the Round Table was instituted, and, in these same chronicles, in the minutest detail, there is also a recounting of the love between Sir Lancelot of the Lake and Queen Guinevere, their intermediary and confidante being the highly honored Duenna Quintañona, and here was born that well-known ballad, so praised in our Spain:

Never was a knight

so well served by ladies

as was Lancelot when

he from Brittany came;

followed by the sweet and gentle tale of his feats of love and of valor. Since that time, from one generation to the next, the order of chivalry has extended and spread through many different parts of the world, and among its members, famous and known for their great deeds, were the valiant Amadís of Gaul and all his sons and grandsons unto the fifth generation, and the valorous Felixmarte of Hyrcania, and the never-sufficiently-praised Tirant lo Blanc, and in our own time we have almost seen and communicated with and heard the invincible and valiant knight Don Belianís of Greece. This, then, gentlemen, is what it means to be a knight errant, and the order of chivalry is just as I have said, and in it, as I have also said, I, though a sinner, have taken my vows, professing exactly what was professed by the knights I have mentioned. And therefore I wander these solitary and desolate places in search of adventures, determined to bring my arm and my person to the most dangerous that fortune may offer, in defense of the weak and helpless.”

These words fully persuaded the travelers that Don Quixote had lost his reason, and they realized the nature of the madness that controlled him and felt the same astonishment that was felt by all who came to know it. Vivaldo, who was a very clever person with a merry disposition, wanted to give Don Quixote the opportunity to go on with his nonsense and entertain them for the short distance that remained before they reached the burial site. And so he said:

“It seems to me, Señor Knight Errant, that your grace has taken a vow to follow one of the most austere professions in the world; in my opinion, not even Carthusian friars have one so austere.”

“Theirs may be as austere,” responded our Don Quixote, “but I have some doubt that it is just as necessary in the world. Because, if truth be told, the soldier, when he carries out his captain’s orders, does no less than the captain who issues the orders. I mean to say that the religious, in absolute peace and tranquility, ask heaven for the well-being of the world, but we soldiers and knights effect what they ask, defending the world with the valor of our good right arms and the sharp edge of our swords, not protected by a roof but under the open sky, subject to the unbearable rays of the sun in summer and the icy blasts of winter. In this way we are ministers of God on earth, the arms by which His justice is put into effect on earth. And since the deeds of war and all things concerned with and related to war cannot be effected except with toil, perspiration, and travail, it follows that those whose profession it is undoubtedly face greater difficulties than those who in tranquil peace and repose pray to God to favor those who cannot help themselves. I do not mean to say, nor has it even passed through my mind, that the state of a knight errant is as virtuous as that of a cloistered religious; I wish only to suggest, given what I must suffer,