If they ask you, as they usually do, by what right you claim the sepulchre, answer nothing. They will find out afterwards. Afterwards ... perhaps when both they and you no longer exist, at any rate not in this world of appearances. And this holy crusade has one great advantage over those other holy crusades which spread the dawn of a new life upon this old world. Those other ardent crusaders knew where the sepulchre of Christ was, where it was said that it was; but our new crusaders will not know where the sepulchre of Don Quixote is to be found. It must be sought for in the act of fighting to redeem it. Your quixotesque madness has led you more than once to speak to me of quixotism as of a new religion. And I must tell you that this new religion which you propose, if it should ever come to materialize, would have two notable characteristics. First, that we are not sure whether its founder, its prophet, Don Quixote--not Cervantes, of course--was a real man, a man of flesh and bone; indeed, we rather suspect that he was a pure fiction. And second, that this prophet was a ridiculous prophet; the butt and laughing-stock of the world. It is courage that we need most of all--courage to face ridicule. Ridicule is the weapon wielded by all the miserable bachelors, barbers, curates, canons and dukes who guard the hidden sepulchre of the Knight of Folly. The Knight who made all the world laugh but never made a joke himself. He had too great a soul to make jokes. He was laughed at for his seriousness. Begin then, my friend, to play Peter the Hermit and call the people to join you, to join us, and let us all go to redeem this sepulchre which lies we know not where. The crusade itself will reveal the holy place to us. You will see that as soon as the sacred squadron begins to march, a new star will appear in the sky, a bright and sounding star, which will sing a new song in the long night that encompasses us, and the star will begin to move when the squadron of the crusaders begins to march, and when they have conquered in their crusade, or when they have all succumbed--which is perhaps the only way of truly conquering--the star will fall from the sky, and the place where it falls will be the place of the sepulchre. The sepulchre will be where the squadron dies. And where the sepulchre is, there is the cradle, there is the birth-place. And from there the bright and sounding star will mount again heavenwards....