In Which the Canon Pursues the Subject of the Books of Chivalry, With Other Matters Worthy of His Wit
THE curate and the canon had become very much interested in their subject, and the canon after a while confided to the curate that he himself had once started to write a book on chivalry, with the intention of making each incident in it a plausible one. It was his view that fiction was all the better the more it resembled the truth. Furthermore, he believed in adhering to good taste and to the rules of art; these things, it seemed to him, had been ignored in the writing of these books. From fiction the conversation drifted to playwriting, and here again the curate and the canon were of the same mind. The actors of their age chose plays that appealed to people of nonsense and with bad taste. Instead of trying to improve the national taste, they produced tawdry plays. The canon cited three excellent plays, however, that he had seen at Madrid, which had earned great profits for their producers; this proved to the canon that the great mass of the public did appreciate a really good play if it was only produced.
While the two clergymen were thus whiling away the time, the barber approached and told the curate they had reached a place which to him seemed a good pasture for the oxen. It was now noon, and the canon decided to join them in their rest. He offered them food out of the provisions that he had brought along on a pack-mule. The rest of the canon's mules were sent to an inn, which was seen nearby, to be fed there.
Seeing his master unguarded, Sancho decided the time had come when he could speak undisturbedly to him, so he hastened to tell him of the plot that the curate and the barber had hit upon. He told his master he was certain it was out of envy and malice, for his having surpassed them in fame and brave deeds. Don Quixote, however, calmly told his squire that if he saw two shapes that resembled the barber and the curate there, they could be nothing but devils having taken on the appearance of his friends in order to be able to do their black deeds so much the more safely and cruelly.