Volume II

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DEDICATION OF VOLUME II.

TO THE COUNT OF LEMOS:

These days past, when sending Your Excellency my plays, that had
appeared in print before being shown on the stage, I said, if I
remember well, that Don Quixote was putting on his spurs to go and
render homage to Your Excellency. Now I say that “with his spurs, he is
on his way.” Should he reach destination methinks I shall have rendered
some service to Your Excellency, as from many parts I am urged to send
him off, so as to dispel the loathing and disgust caused by another Don
Quixote who, under the name of Second Part, has run masquerading
through the whole world. And he who has shown the greatest longing for
him has been the great Emperor of China, who wrote me a letter in
Chinese a month ago and sent it by a special courier. He asked me, or
to be truthful, he begged me to send him Don Quixote, for he intended
to found a college where the Spanish tongue would be taught, and it was
his wish that the book to be read should be the History of Don Quixote.
He also added that I should go and be the rector of this college. I
asked the bearer if His Majesty had afforded a sum in aid of my travel
expenses. He answered, “No, not even in thought.”

“Then, brother,” I replied, “you can return to your China, post haste
or at whatever haste you are bound to go, as I am not fit for so long a
travel and, besides being ill, I am very much without money, while
Emperor for Emperor and Monarch for Monarch, I have at Naples the great
Count of Lemos, who, without so many petty titles of colleges and
rectorships, sustains me, protects me and does me more favour than I
can wish for.”

Thus I gave him his leave and I beg mine from you, offering Your
Excellency the “Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda,” a book I shall
finish within four months, Deo volente, and which will be either the
worst or the best that has been composed in our language, I mean of
those intended for entertainment; at which I repent of having called it
the worst, for, in the opinion of friends, it is bound to attain the
summit of possible quality. May Your Excellency return in such health
that is wished you; Persiles will be ready to kiss your hand and I your
feet, being as I am, Your Excellency’s most humble servant.

From Madrid, this last day of October of the year one thousand six
hundred and fifteen.

At the service of Your Excellency:

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA

THE AUTHOR’S PREFACE

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God bless me, gentle (or it may be plebeian) reader, how eagerly must
thou be looking forward to this preface, expecting to find there
retaliation, scolding, and abuse against the author of the second Don
Quixote—I mean him who was, they say, begotten at Tordesillas and born
at Tarragona! Well then, the truth is, I am not going to give thee that
satisfaction; for, though injuries stir up anger in humbler breasts, in
mine the rule must admit of an exception. Thou wouldst have me call him
ass, fool, and malapert, but I have no such intention; let his offence
be his punishment, with his bread let him eat it, and there’s an end of
it. What I cannot help taking amiss is that he charges me with being
old and one-handed, as if it had been in my power to keep time from
passing over me, or as if the loss of my hand had been brought about in
some tavern, and not on the grandest occasion the past or present has
seen, or the future can hope to see. If my wounds have no beauty to the
beholder’s eye, they are, at least, honourable in the estimation of
those who know where they were received; for the soldier shows to
greater advantage dead in battle than alive in flight; and so strongly
is this my feeling, that if now it were proposed to perform an
impossibility for me, I would rather have had my share in that mighty
action, than be free from my wounds this minute without having been
present at it. Those the soldier shows on his face and breast are stars
that direct others to the heaven of honour and ambition of merited
praise; and moreover it is to be observed that it is not with grey
hairs that one writes, but with the understanding, and that commonly
improves with years. I take it amiss, too, that he calls me envious,
and explains to me, as if I were ignorant, what envy is; for really and
truly, of the two kinds there are, I only know that which is holy,
noble, and high-minded; and if that be so, as it is, I am not likely to
attack a priest, above all if, in addition, he holds the rank of
familiar of the Holy Office. And if he said what he did on account of
him on whose behalf it seems he spoke, he is entirely mistaken; for I
worship the genius of that person, and admire his works and his
unceasing and strenuous industry. After all, I am grateful to this
gentleman, the author, for saying that my novels are more satirical
than exemplary, but that they are good; for they could not be that
unless there was a little of everything in them.

I suspect thou wilt say that I am taking a very humble line, and
keeping myself too much within the bounds of my moderation, from a
feeling that additional suffering should not be inflicted upon a
sufferer, and that what this gentleman has to endure must doubtless be
very great, as he does not dare to come out into the open field and
broad daylight, but hides his name and disguises his country as if he
had been guilty of some lese majesty. If perchance thou shouldst come
to know him, tell him from me that I do not hold myself aggrieved; for
I know well what the temptations of the devil are, and that one of the
greatest is putting it into a man’s head that he can write and print a
book by which he will get as much fame as money, and as much money as
fame; and to prove it I will beg of you, in your own sprightly,
pleasant way, to tell him this story.

There was a madman in Seville who took to one of the drollest
absurdities and vagaries that ever madman in the world gave way to. It
was this: he made a tube of reed sharp at one end, and catching a dog
in the street, or wherever it might be, he with his foot held one of
its legs fast, and with his hand lifted up the other, and as best he
could fixed the tube where, by blowing, he made the dog as round as a
ball; then holding it in this position, he gave it a couple of slaps on
the belly, and let it go, saying to the bystanders (and there were
always plenty of them): “Do your worships think, now, that it is an
easy thing to blow up a dog?”—Does your worship think now, that it is
an easy thing to write a book?

And if this story does not suit him, you may, dear reader, tell him
this one, which is likewise of a madman and a dog.

In Cordova there was another madman, whose way it was to carry a piece
of marble slab or a stone, not of the lightest, on his head, and when
he came upon any unwary dog he used to draw close to him and let the
weight fall right on top of him; on which the dog in a rage, barking
and howling, would run three streets without stopping. It so happened,
however, that one of the dogs he discharged his load upon was a
cap-maker’s dog, of which his master was very fond. The stone came down
hitting it on the head, the dog raised a yell at the blow, the master
saw the affair and was wroth, and snatching up a measuring-yard rushed
out at the madman and did not leave a sound bone in his body, and at
every stroke he gave him he said, “You dog, you thief! my lurcher!
Don’t you see, you brute, that my dog is a lurcher?” and so, repeating
the word “lurcher” again and again, he sent the madman away beaten to a
jelly. The madman took the lesson to heart, and vanished, and for more
than a month never once showed himself in public; but after that he
came out again with his old trick and a heavier load than ever. He came
up to where there was a dog, and examining it very carefully without
venturing to let the stone fall, he said: “This is a lurcher; ware!” In
short, all the dogs he came across, be they mastiffs or terriers, he
said were lurchers; and he discharged no more stones. Maybe it will be
the same with this historian; that he will not venture another time to
discharge the weight of his wit in books, which, being bad, are harder
than stones. Tell him, too, that I do not care a farthing for the
threat he holds out to me of depriving me of my profit by means of his
book; for, to borrow from the famous interlude of “The Perendenga,” I
say in answer to him, “Long life to my lord the Veintiquatro, and
Christ be with us all.” Long life to the great Conde de Lemos, whose
Christian charity and well-known generosity support me against all the
strokes of my curst fortune; and long life to the supreme benevolence
of His Eminence of Toledo, Don Bernardo de Sandoval y Rojas; and what
matter if there be no printing-presses in the world, or if they print
more books against me than there are letters in the verses of Mingo
Revulgo! These two princes, unsought by any adulation or flattery of
mine, of their own goodness alone, have taken it upon them to show me
kindness and protect me, and in this I consider myself happier and
richer than if Fortune had raised me to her greatest height in the
ordinary way. The poor man may retain honour, but not the vicious;
poverty may cast a cloud over nobility, but cannot hide it altogether;
and as virtue of itself sheds a certain light, even though it be
through the straits and chinks of penury, it wins the esteem of lofty
and noble spirits, and in consequence their protection. Thou needst say
no more to him, nor will I say anything more to thee, save to tell thee
to bear in mind that this Second Part of “Don Quixote” which I offer
thee is cut by the same craftsman and from the same cloth as the First,
and that in it I present thee Don Quixote continued, and at length dead
and buried, so that no one may dare to bring forward any further
evidence against him, for that already produced is sufficient; and
suffice it, too, that some reputable person should have given an
account of all these shrewd lunacies of his without going into the
matter again; for abundance, even of good things, prevents them from
being valued; and scarcity, even in the case of what is bad, confers a
certain value. I was forgetting to tell thee that thou mayest expect
the “Persiles,” which I am now finishing, and also the Second Part of
“Galatea.”

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