Having risen to its feet, this living death, in a sleepy voice and with a tongue hardly awake, held forth as follows: I am that Merlin who the legends say The devil had for father, and the lie Hath gathered credence with the lapse of time.
Of magic prince, of Zoroastric lore Monarch and treasurer, with jealous eye I view the efforts of the age to hide The gallant deeds of doughty errant knights, Who are, and ever have been, dear to me.
Enchanters and magicians and their kind Are mostly hard of heart; not so am I; For mine is tender, soft, compassionate, And its delight is doing good to all.
In the dim caverns of the gloomy Dis, Where, tracing mystic lines and characters, My soul abideth now, there came to me The sorrow-laden plaint of her, the fair, The peerless Dulcinea del Toboso.
I knew of her enchantment and her fate, From high-born dame to peasant wench transformed And touched with pity, first I turned the leaves Of countless volumes of my devilish craft, And then, in this grim grisly skeleton Myself encasing, hither have I come To show where lies the fitting remedy To give relief in such a piteous case.
O thou, the pride and pink of all that wear The adamantine steel! O shining light, O beacon, polestar, path and guide of all Who, scorning slumber and the lazy down, Adopt the toilsome life of bloodstained arms! To thee, great hero who all praise transcends, La Mancha's lustre and Iberia's star, Don Quixote, wise as brave, to thee I say-- For peerless Dulcinea del Toboso Her pristine form and beauty to regain, 'T is needful that thy esquire Sancho shall, On his own sturdy buttocks bared to heaven, Three thousand and three hundred lashes lay, And that they smart and sting and hurt him well.
Thus have the authors of her woe resolved.
And this is, gentles, wherefore I have come.
"By all that's good," exclaimed Sancho at this, "I'll just as soon give myself three stabs with a dagger as three, not to say three thousand, lashes.

The devil take such a way of disenchanting! I don't see what my backside has got to do with enchantments.

By God, if Senor Merlin has not found out some other way of disenchanting the lady Dulcinea del Toboso, she may go to her grave enchanted." "But I'll take you, Don Clown stuffed with garlic," said Don Quixote, "and tie you to a tree as naked as when your mother brought you forth, and give you, not to say three thousand three hundred, but six thousand six hundred lashes, and so well laid on that they won't be got rid of if you try three thousand three hundred times; don't answer me a word or I'll tear your soul out." On hearing this Merlin said, "That will not do, for the lashes worthy Sancho has to receive must be given of his own free will and not by force, and at whatever time he pleases, for there is no fixed limit assigned to him; but it is permitted him, if he likes to commute by half the pain of this whipping, to let them be given by the hand of another, though it may be somewhat weighty." "Not a hand, my own or anybody else's, weighty or weighable, shall touch me," said Sancho.

"Was it I that gave birth to the lady Dulcinea del Toboso, that my backside is to pay for the sins of her eyes?
My master, indeed, that's a part of her--for, he's always calling her 'my life' and 'my soul,' and his stay and prop--may and ought to whip himself for her and take all the trouble required for her disenchantment.

But for me to whip myself! Abernuncio!" As soon as Sancho had done speaking the nymph in silver that was at the side of Merlin's ghost stood up, and removing the thin veil from her face disclosed one that seemed to all something more than exceedingly beautiful; and with a masculine freedom from embarrassment and in a voice not very like a lady's, addressing Sancho directly, said, "Thou wretched squire, soul of a pitcher, heart of a cork tree, with bowels of flint and pebbles; if, thou impudent thief, they bade thee throw thyself down from some lofty tower; if, enemy of mankind, they asked thee to swallow a dozen of toads, two of lizards, and three of adders; if they wanted thee to slay thy wife and children with a sharp murderous scimitar, it would be no wonder for thee to show thyself stubborn and squeamish.