The following is my translation of the legendary opening passage of the first chapter of Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes:
In a place in La Mancha, somewhere whose name I do not wish to remember, not long ago there lived a nobleman with the typical lance on the rack, old leather shield, thin nag, and coursing greyhound. A stew with more beef than veal, most nights a cocktail, bacon and eggs on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, a little bit of young pigeon on Sundays—these things accounted for the three parts of his estate. The rest was taken up by broadcloth tunics and velvet overshoes with their slippers for celebrations, and weekdays were graced with the finest of medium-fine cloths. At home he had a housekeeper in her forties, a niece not yet twenty, and a servant working in the fields and at home that could both saddle up his nag and handle a billhook. Our nobleman was nearing the age of fifty, with a sturdy and lean constitution and a bony face, a great early riser who was sympathetic to the hunt. Some would say that his nickname was Quijada or Quesada (there is some disagreement among writers on the matter), although plausible conjectures point to the name Quijana. But this is unimportant to our story—it is sufficient for this narration about him to deal only in the truth.
It is known, moreover, that this aforementioned nobleman was given to reading books about knighthood whenever he had an idle moment (which was the most frequent kind of moment), reading so passionately and attentively that he almost completely forgot about the hunt and even the administration of his estate. He became so curious and unhinged in this matter that he sold many acres of land used for seeding in order to buy books about knighthood, carrying home as many as could be found. Of all the books, he considered the ones written by Feliciano de Silva second to none because the clarity of that author’s prose and that intricate reasoning of his seemed to Don Quixote to be a godsend. This held true all the more upon his encounter with amorous compliments and duel correspondence in his reading: he would find written that “the reason of unreason made to be my reasoning, that is the undermining of my reason, that with reason I complain of all your beauty” as well as “the high heavens of your divinity divinely fortified with the stars make you worthy of the worthiness so worthy of your highness.” The poor knight was losing his mind with this and similar lines of reasoning, and it became apparent upon his understanding them and unraveling their meaning that not even Aristotle himself would have grasped or understood them if he had reawakened solely for that purpose.