Bless me! reader, gentle or simple, or whatever you be, how impatiently by this time must you expect this preface, supposing it to be nothing but revengeful invectives against the author of the second Don Quixote. But I must beg your pardon: for I shall say no more of him than everybody says, that Tordesillas is the place where he was begotten, and Tarragona the place where he was born; and. though it be universally said, that even a worm when trod upon, will turn again, yet I am resolved for once to cross the proverb. You perhaps now would have me call him coxcomb, fool, and madman ; but I am of another mind; and so let his folly be its own punishment. But there is something which I cannot