The priest and the barber of the place, who were Don Quixote's great
friends, happened to be there [at Don Quixote's house]; and the
housekeeper was saying to them aloud: What is your opinion, Señor
Licentiate Pero Perez (for that was the priest's name) of my master's
misfortune? for neither he, nor his horse, nor the target, nor the
lance, nor the armour have been seen these six days past. Woe is me! I
am verily persuaded, and it is as certainly true as I was born to die,
that these cursed books of knight-errantry which he keeps, and is so
often reading, have turned his brain; and now I think of it, I have
often heard him say, talking to himself, that he would turn
knight-errant, and go about the world in quest of adventures. The devil
and Barabbas take all such books, that have thus spoiled the finest
understanding in all La Mancha. The niece joined with her, and said
moreover: Know, master Nicholas (for that was the barber's name), that
it has often happened, that my honoured uncle has continued poring on
these confounded books of disadventures two whole days and nights....
But I take the blame of all this to myself, that I did not advertise
you, gentlemen, of my dear uncle's extravagances, before they were come
to the height that they now are, that you might have prevented them by
burning all those cursed books, of which he has so great a store, and
which as justly deserve to be committed to the flames, as if they were
heretical....
Whilst Don Quixote still slept on, the priest asked the niece for the
keys of the chamber where the books were, those authors of the mischief;
and she delivered them with a very good will. They all went in, and the
housekeeper with them. They found above a hundred volumes in folio, very
well bound, besides a great many small ones. And no sooner did the
housekeeper see them, than she ran out of the room in great haste, and
immediately returned with a pot of holy water and a bunch of hyssop, and
said: Señor Licentiate, take this and sprinkle the room, lest some
enchanter, of the many these books abound with, should enchant us in
revenge for what we intend to do, in banishing them out of the world.
The priest smiled at the housekeeper's simplicity, and ordered the
barber to reach him the books one by one, that they might see what they
treated of; for, perhaps, they might find some that might not deserve to
be chastised by fire. No, said the niece, there is no reason why any of
them should be spared.... The housekeeper said the same; so eagerly did
they both thirst for the death of those innocents. But the priest would
not agree to that, without first reading the titles at least....
That night the housekeeper set fire to, and burnt all the books that
were in the yard [whither they had been cast], and in the house too; and
some must have perished, that deserved to be treasured up in perpetual
archives.--CERVANTES. _Don Quixote._