A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines Part 30

Now the curate and the barber of the town where Don Quixote lived were much concerned on account of the madness of their old friend, for they loved Don Quixote for his high spirit and his gentle ways when the most violent fits of madness were not upon him. And so they set forth to try and entice him to return to his home again where they hoped that doctors could cure him of his delusions.

To accomplish their ends they engaged the services of a young lady of great beauty who represented to Don Quixote that she was a princess despoiled of her kingdom, and that he must rescue her lands from the power of a great and sour-faced giant that held them.

The curate and the barber had disguised themselves before they met Don Quixote so that he might not recognize them and guess their design.

They found him half stripped of his clothing and doing penance for the beautiful Dulcinea in his s.h.i.+rt and drawers. He was engaged in a useless fast in the wilderness where he cut many ridiculous capers and was almost starved into the bargain. Sancho, he had sent away with a letter to Dulcinea, but Sancho returned with the curate and the barber and the young lady and together they tricked the mad knight into returning in the direction of his native village.

On their way, however, they stopped at an inn where yet another adventure was to befall Don Quixote, for dreaming of the giant from whom he was to rescue the lady's kingdom he attacked with his sword two wine skins that were in his room and flooded his apartment with red wine.

Before he could be taken home, however, his madness broke out on him so violently that still another scheme had to be employed. His friends, disguised, crept into his chamber and tied him hand and foot. Then the poor knight was placed in a wooden cage and borne home behind two oxen.

Of the many adventures that Don Quixote encountered, how he broke away from home once more and how his Squire Sancho actually did become the ruler of an island for a brief period, it is impossible to write here.

But the name of Don Quixote, through the marvelous writer who created this character, has become known throughout the world, and stands to-day as the symbol for high ideals and self-sacrifice that are carried to the point of madness and utter folly.

Cervantes had still another design in creating Don Quixote than to make an amusing story, for he intended to bring into ridicule and disrepute the old-fas.h.i.+oned stories of chivalry with which Spain was filled at the time he lived. And he succeeded so well that since his day not another one has been written.