After Don Quixote had satisfied his hunger, he took up a handful of
acorns, and, looking on them attentively, gave utterance to expressions
like these:--
"Happy times and happy ages were those which the ancients termed the
Golden Age! Not because gold, so prized in this our Iron age, was to be
obtained, in that fortunate period, without toil; but because they who
then lived were ignorant of those two words, Mine and Thine. In that
blessed age all things were in common; to provide their ordinary
sustenance no other labor was necessary than to raise their hands and
take it from the sturdy oaks, which stood liberally inviting them to
taste their sweet and relishing fruit. The limpid fountains and running
streams offered them, in magnificent abundance, their delicious and
transparent waters. In the clefts of rocks, and in hollow trees, the
industrious and provident bees formed their commonwealths, offering to
every hand, without interest, the fertile produce of their most
delicious toil. The stately cork-trees, impelled by their own courtesy
alone, divested themselves of their light and expanded bark, with which
men began to cover their houses, supported by rough poles, only as a
defence against the inclemency of the heavens. All then was peace, all
amity, all concord. The heavy colter of the crooked plough had not yet
dared to force open and search into the tender bowels of our first
mother, who, unconstrained, offered from every part of her fertile and
spacious bosom whatever might feed, sustain, and delight those, her
children, by whom she was then possessed."