And now the horsemen in livery came galloping up with shouts and outlandish cries and cheers to where Don Quixote stood amazed and wondering; and one of them, he to whom Roque had sent word, addressing him exclaimed, “Welcome to our city, mirror, beacon, star and cynosure of all knight-errantry in its widest extent! Welcome, I say, valiant Don Quixote of La Mancha; not the false, the fictitious, the apocryphal, that these latter days have offered us in lying histories, but the true, the legitimate, the real one that Cide Hamete Benengeli, flower of historians, has described to us!”

Don Quixote made no answer, nor did the horsemen wait for one, but wheeling again with all their followers, they began curvetting round Don Quixote, who, turning to Sancho, said, “These gentlemen have plainly recognised us; I will wager they have read our history, and even that newly printed one by the Aragonese.”