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jot from the truth. In fine, his judgment being completely obscured, he was seized with one of the strangest fancies that ever entered the head of any madman; this was, a belief that it behooved him, as well for the advancement of his glory as the service of his country, to become a knight-errant, and traverse the world, armed and mounted, in quest of adventures, and to practice all that had been performed by knights-errant of whom he had read; redressing every species of grievance, and exposing himself to dangers, which, being surmounted, might secure to him eternal glory and renown. The poor gentleman imagined himself at least crowned Emperor of Trebisond, by the valor of his arm; and thus wrapped in these agreeable delusions and borne away by the extraordinary pleasure he found in them, he hastened to put his designs into execution. The first thing he did was to scour up some rusty armor which had been his great-grandfather's, and had lain many years neglected in a corner. This he cleaned and adjusted as well as he could; but he found one grand defect,--the helmet was incomplete, having only the morion. This deficiency, however, he ingeniously supplied by making a kind of visor of pasteboard, which, being fixed to the morion, gave the appearance of an entire helmet. It is true, indeed, that, in order to prove its strength, he drew his sword, and gave it two strokes, the first of which instantly demolished the labor of a week; but not altogether approving of the facility with which it was destroyed, and in order to secure himself against a similar misfortune, he made another visor, which, having fenced in the inside with small bars of iron, he felt assured of its strength, and, without making any more experiments, held it to be a most excellent helmet. In the next place he visited his steed; and although this animal had more blemishes than the horse of Gonela, which, "_tantum pellis et ossa fuit_," yet, in his eyes, neither the Bucephalus of Alexander nor the Cid's Babieca, could be compared with him. Four days was he deliberating upon what name he should give him; for, as he said to himself, it would be very improper that a horse so excellent, appertaining to a knight so famous, should be without an appropriate name; he therefore endeavored to find one that should express what he had been before he belonged to a knight-errant, and also what he now was: nothing could, indeed, be more reasonable than that, when t
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