“ ‘Hold hard!’ said I at this, ‘tell your story as you ought, Señor Don Montesinos, for you know very well that all comparisons are odious, 646 and there is no occasion to compare one person with another; the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso is what she is, and the lady Doña Belerma is what she is and has been, and that’s enough.’ To which he made answer, ‘Forgive me, Señor Don Quixote; I own I was wrong and spoke unadvisedly in saying that the lady Dulcinea could scarcely come up to the lady Belerma; for it were enough for me to have learned, by what means I know not, that you are her knight, to make me bite my tongue out before I compared her to anything save heaven itself.’ After this apology which the great Montesinos made me, my heart recovered itself from the shock I had received in hearing my lady compared with Belerma.”

“Still I wonder,” said Sancho, “that your worship did not get upon the old fellow and bruise every bone of him with kicks, and pluck his beard until you didn’t leave a hair in it.”