XX
DON QUIXOTE
No soy tan loco ni tan menguado como debo de haberle parecido.—Don Quixote, Part I, Chapter XVII.
I
Great is the power of genius, even though it be constrained to inhabit the flesh of a swordsman, soldier, slave, accountant, adventurer, prisoner, wandering poet, and needy courtier by the name of Miguel Cervantes.
By virtue of this power the shade of Don Quixote has succeeded in deceiving us. We have been led to think that his life was full of deception in the sense that he was himself deceived by carnivorous men, decadent times, and impossible books. His life was indeed full of deception, but he was himself the deceiver, and we of the succeeding generations have been the ones deceived.
Cervantes does all he can to set before us—like a lank marionette decked out in obsessions and scraps of iron—a Don Quixote crazed
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