"Brother," said the curate, "those two books are made up of lies, and are
full of folly and nonsense; but this of the Great Captain is a true
history, and contains the deeds of Gonzalo Hernandez of Cordova, who by
his many and great achievements earned the title all over the world of
the Great Captain, a famous and illustrious name, and deserved by him
alone; and this Diego Garcia de Paredes was a distinguished knight of the
city of Trujillo in Estremadura, a most gallant soldier, and of such
bodily strength that with one finger he stopped a mill-wheel in full
motion; and posted with a two-handed sword at the foot of a bridge he
kept the whole of an immense army from passing over it, and achieved such
other exploits that if, instead of his relating them himself with the
modesty of a knight and of one writing his own history, some free and
unbiassed writer had recorded them, they would have thrown into the shade
all the deeds of the Hectors, Achilleses, and Rolands."

"Tell that to my father," said the landlord. "There's a thing to be
astonished at! Stopping a mill-wheel! By God your worship should read
what I have read of Felixmarte of Hircania, how with one single
backstroke he cleft five giants asunder through the middle as if they had
been made of bean-pods like the little friars the children make; and
another time he attacked a very great and powerful army, in which there
were more than a million six hundred thousand soldiers, all armed from
head to foot, and he routed them all as if they had been flocks of sheep.

"And then, what do you say to the good Cirongilio of Thrace, that was so
stout and bold; as may be seen in the book, where it is related that as
he was sailing along a river there came up out of the midst of the water
against him a fiery serpent, and he, as soon as he saw it, flung himself
upon it and got astride of its scaly shoulders, and squeezed its throat
with both hands with such force that the serpent, finding he was