LORD SAVE ME, how impatiently you must be waiting for this prologue, illustrious or perhaps plebeian reader, believing you will find in it reprisals, quarrels, and vituperations hurled at the author of the second Don Quixote. I mean the one sired in Tordesillas, they say, and born in Tarragona!³¹⁰ But the truth is I will not give you that pleasure, for although offenses awaken rage in the most humble hearts, in mine this rule must find its exception. You would like me to call him an ass, a fool, an insolent dolt, but the thought has not even entered my mind: let his sin be his punishment, let him eat it with his bread, and let that be an end to it. What I do mind, however, is that he accuses me of being old and one-handed, as if it had been in my power to stop time and halt its passage, or as if I had been wounded in some tavern and not at the greatest event ever seen in past or present times, or that future times can ever hope to see. If my wounds do not shine in the eyes of those who see them, they are, at least, esteemed by those who know where they were acquired; it seems better for a soldier to be dead in combat than safe in flight, and I believe this so firmly that even if I could achieve the impossible now, I would rather have taken part in that prodigious battle than to be free of wounds and not to have been there. The wounds on a soldier’s face and bosom are stars that guide others to the heaven of honor and the desire to win glory, and it should be noted that one writes not with gray hairs but with the understanding, which generally improves with the years.

I am also sorry that he calls me envious and, as if I were an ignorant man, explains to me what envy is, but the fact is that of the two kinds of envy, I know only the one that is holy, noble, and well-intentioned; and this being so, I do not need to persecute any priest, especially one who is a familiar of the Holy Office;³¹¹ if he said this in defense of the person on whose behalf he appears to have said it, he was entirely deceived, for I revere that person’s genius and admire his works and continual and virtuous diligence. But I do thank this worthy author for saying that although my novels are more satiric than exemplary, they are good, which they could not be if they were not good in every respect.

I think you will say that I am showing great restraint and am keeping well within the bounds of modesty, knowing that one must not add afflictions to the afflicted, and the affliction of this gentleman is undoubtedly very great, for he does not dare to appear openly in the light of day but hides his name and conceals his birthplace, as if he had committed some terrible act of treason against the crown. If you ever happen to meet him, tell him for me that I do not consider myself offended, for I know very well what the temptations of the devil are, and one of the greatest is to give a man the idea that he can compose and publish a book and thereby win as much fame as fortune, as much fortune as fame; in confirmation of this, I should like you, using all your wit and charm, to tell him this story:

In Sevilla there was a madman who had the strangest, most comical notion that any madman ever had. What he did was to make a tube out of a reed that he sharpened at one end, and then he would catch a dog on the street, or somewhere else, hold down one of its hind legs with his foot, lift the other with his hand, fit the tube into the right place, and blow until he had made the animal as round as a ball, and then, holding it up, he would give the dog two little pats on the belly and let it go, saying to the onlookers, and there were always a good number of them:

“Now do your graces think it’s an easy job to blow up a dog?” Now does your grace think it’s an easy job to write a book?

And if that story does not please him, my dear reader, you can tell him this one, which is also about a madman and a dog:

In Córdoba there was a madman who was in the habit of carrying on his head a slab of marble, or a stone of no small weight, and when he came across an unwary dog, he would go up to the animal and drop the weight straight down on it. The dog would go into a panic and, barking and howling, run up three streets without stopping. Now, one of the dogs he dropped the weight on happened to belong to a haberdasher and was much loved by its owner. The stone came down, hit the dog on the head, and the battered animal began to yelp and howl; its master saw and heard this, and he seized a measuring stick, came after the madman, and beat him to within an inch of his life, and with each blow he said:

“You miserable thief, you dog, why did you hurt my hound? Didn’t you see, cruel man, that my dog was a hound?”

And repeating the word hound over and over again, he beat and pummeled the madman. Chastised, the madman withdrew and was not seen on the street for more than a month, but at the end of this time he returned with the same mad idea and an even heavier weight. He would go up to a dog, stare at it long and hard, and not wanting or daring to drop the stone, he would say:

“This is a hound: watch out!”

In fact, all the dogs he encountered, even if they were mastiffs or little lapdogs, he called hounds, and so he never dropped a stone on one again. Perhaps something similar may happen to this storyteller, who will not dare ever again to set his great talent loose among books, which, when they are bad, are harder than boulders.

Tell him, too, that his threat to deprive me of profits with his book is something I do not care about at all, for in the words of the famous interlude La Perendenga, ³¹² I say long live my Lord High Mayor, and the peace of Christ be with you all. Long live the great Count of Lemos, whose well-known Christianity and liberality keep me standing in spite of all the blows struck by my bad fortune, and long live the supreme charity of His Eminence of Toledo, Don Bernardo de Sandoval y Rojas,³¹³ even if there were no more printing presses in the world, and even if more books were published against me than there are letters in the verses of Mingo Revulgo.³¹⁴ These two princes have not received adulation from me, or flattery, but moved only by their own goodness, they have undertaken to favor me with kindness, and for this I consider myself luckier and richer than if fortune had brought me to the heights by any ordinary means. A poor man may have honor, but not a villain; need may cloud nobility, but not hide it completely; if virtue sheds her light, even along the crags and cracks of poverty, it will be esteemed by high, noble spirits, and so be favored.

Say no more to him, and I do not wish to say more to you except to tell you to consider that this second part of Don Quixote, which I offer to you now, is cut by the same artisan and from the same cloth as the first, and in it I give you a somewhat expanded Don Quixote who is, at the end, dead and buried, so that no one will dare tell more tales about him, for the ones told in the past are enough, and it is also enough that an honorable man has recounted his clever follies and does not want to take them up again; for abundance, even of things that are good, makes people esteem them less, and scarcity, even of bad things, lends a certain value. I forgot to tell you to expect the Persiles, which I am finishing now, and the second part of Galatea. ³¹⁵