and show you how beneficial and necessary knights-errant were in days of
yore, and how useful they would be in these days were they but in vogue;
but now, for the sins of the people, sloth and indolence, gluttony and
luxury are triumphant."

"Our guest has broken out on our hands," said Don Lorenzo to himself at
this point; "but, for all that, he is a glorious madman, and I should be
a dull blockhead to doubt it."

Here, being summoned to dinner, they brought their colloquy to a close.
Don Diego asked his son what he had been able to make out as to the wits
of their guest. To which he replied, "All the doctors and clever scribes
in the world will not make sense of the scrawl of his madness; he is a
madman full of streaks, full of lucid intervals."

They went in to dinner, and the repast was such as Don Diego said on the
road he was in the habit of giving to his guests, neat, plentiful, and
tasty; but what pleased Don Quixote most was the marvellous silence that
reigned throughout the house, for it was like a Carthusian monastery.

When the cloth had been removed, grace said and their hands washed, Don
Quixote earnestly pressed Don Lorenzo to repeat to him his verses for the
poetical tournament, to which he replied, "Not to be like those poets
who, when they are asked to recite their verses, refuse, and when they
are not asked for them vomit them up, I will repeat my gloss, for which I
do not expect any prize, having composed it merely as an exercise of
ingenuity."

"A discerning friend of mine," said Don Quixote, "was of opinion that no
one ought to waste labour in glossing verses; and the reason he gave was