"I have before now told thee many times, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "that thou art a mighty great chatterer, and that with a blunt wit thou art always striving at sharpness; but to show thee what a fool thou art and how rational I am, I would have thee listen to a short story. Thou must know that a certain widow, fair, young, independent, and rich, and above all free and easy, fell in love with a sturdy strapping young lay-brother; his superior came to know of it, and one day said to the worthy widow by way of brotherly remonstrance, 'I am surprised, señora, and not without good reason, that a woman of such high standing, so fair, and so rich as you are, should have fallen in love with such a mean, low, stupid fellow as So-and-so, when in this house there are so many masters, graduates and divinity students from among whom you might choose as if they were a lot of pears, saying. This one I'll take, that I won't take;' but she replied to him with great sprightliness and candor, 'My dear sir, you are very much mistaken, and your ideas are very old-fashioned, if you think that I have made a bad choice in So-and-so, fool as he seems; because for all I want with him he knows as much and more philosophy than Aristotle.' In the same way, Sancho, for all I want with Dulcinea del Toboso she is just as good as the most exalted princess on earth. It is not to be supposed that all those poets who sang the praises of ladies under the fancy names they give them, had any such mistresses. Thinkest thou that the Amaryllises, the Phillises, the Sylvias, the Dianas, the Galateas,[1] the Filidas, and all the rest of them, that the books, the ballads, the barbers' shops, the theatres are full of, were really and truly ladies of flesh and blood, and mistresses of those that glorify and have glorified them? Nothing of the kind; they only invent them for the most part to furnish a subject for their verses, and that they may pass for lovers, or for men who have some pretensions to be so; and so it is enough for me to think and believe that the good Aldonza Lorenzo is fair and virtuous; and as to her pedigree it is very little matter, for no one will examine into it for the purpose of conferring any order
- ↑ The introduction here of the name of his own heroine, Galatea, may be taken for what it is worth as a contradiction of the story that by Galatea he meant the mother of his daughter Isabel. An ingenious speculator might suggest that his object was to soothe the susceptibilities of his wife Doña Catalina, but it is clear that there were no heartburnings on that score in the household of Cervantes.
