is by its very nature improbable, even as all those lives and actions and works are improbable which rise above the surface of that round stagnant swamp in which we live. Even in the Don Quixote Cervantes, with the justice of a competent artist, saves and defends more than one romance of chivalry. The only ones he throws into the fire are those whose existence is not justified by beauty of expression and imagination.[1]
Nor could he, accepting as reality the Spain of the seventeenth century, claim to regard as utterly improbable the mediæval knightly sagas of Brittany and the Ardennes. To us the contrast between daily life and the marvels of chivalry seems far greater than it really was in the Spain of Cervantes. The grotesque exploits of Don Quixote would be impossible in our well regulated lands. At his first sally gendarmes and doctors would have seized Rocinante and his rider. Even the attack on the windmills and the meeting with the Biscayan would have been impossible.
Furthermore, no absolute contrast between the dreams of Don Quixote and ordinary life is to be found in the novel itself. The inn-keeper and the curate second Don Quixote’s whims for reasons of their own; the ducal party and the bachelor and the banditti of Barcelona merely order affairs in such a way that Don Quixote
