es of England, in which are recorded the famous deeds of King
Arthur, whom we in our popular Castilian invariably call King Artus, with
regard to whom it is an ancient tradition, and commonly received all over
that kingdom of Great Britain, that this king did not die, but was
changed by magic art into a raven, and that in process of time he is to
return to reign and recover his kingdom and sceptre; for which reason it
cannot be proved that from that time to this any Englishman ever killed a
raven? Well, then, in the time of this good king that famous order of
chivalry of the Knights of the Round Table was instituted, and the amour
of Don Lancelot of the Lake with the Queen Guinevere occurred, precisely
as is there related, the go-between and confidante therein being the
highly honourable dame Quintanona, whence came that ballad so well known
and widely spread in our Spain--

O never surely was there knight
So served by hand of dame,
As served was he Sir Lancelot hight
When he from Britain came--

with all the sweet and delectable course of his achievements in love and
war. Handed down from that time, then, this order of chivalry went on
extending and spreading itself over many and various parts of the world;
and in it, famous and renowned for their deeds, were the mighty Amadis of
Gaul with all his sons and descendants to the fifth generation, and the
valiant Felixmarte of Hircania, and the never sufficiently praised
Tirante el Blanco, and in our own days almost we have seen and heard and
talked with the invincible knight Don Belianis of Greece. This, then,
sirs, is to be a knight-errant, and what I have spoken of is the order of
his chivalry, of which, as I have already said, I, though a sinner, have
made profession, and what the aforesaid knights professed that same do I
profess, and so I go through these solitudes and wilds seeking
adventures, resolved in soul to oppose my arm and person to the most
perilous that fortune may offer me in aid of the weak and needy."

By these words of his the travellers were able to satisfy themselves of
Don Quixote's being out of his senses and of the form of madness that
overmastered him, at which they felt the same astonishment that all felt
on first becoming acquainted with it; and Vivaldo, who was a person of
great shrewdness and of a lively temperament, in order to beguile the
short journey which they said was required to reach the mountain, the
scene of the burial, sought