Basin-helmet? Basin-helmet, Sancho? We must not do you the injustice to suppose that your calling it a basin-helmet was one of your sly jokes--no, it marks the progress of your faith. You were unable to pass from what your eyes assured you of, showing you the object in dispute in the likeness of a basin, to what faith in your master assured you, showing it to you in the likeness of a helmet, without catching at this compromise of a basin-helmet. In this respect there are many Sanchos like you and you have invented this notion that virtue consists in the _via media_. No, friend Sancho, no, there is no basin-helmet that is worth a straw. It is a helmet or it is a basin according to him who uses it, or rather it is basin and helmet at the same time for it serves both turns. Without the least addition or diminution it can and ought to be both helmet and basin, all of it helmet and all of it basin; but what it can never be nor ought to be, however much be added to it or taken away from it, is basin-helmet. The barber to whom the basin belonged found the other barber, Master Nicolas, and Don Fernando and the curate and Cardenio and the judge more emphatic, for to the amazement of all the others who were present they insisted that it was a helmet. One of the four pursuivants, regarding this as a laborious joke, became annoyed and treated those who said it was a helmet as if they were drunk. Don Quixote called him a liar and hurled himself upon him; both sides prepared for battle and fell to blows. Then it was that Don Quixote, thinking that he was certainly involved in the disorder and confusion of King Agramant’s camp, lifted up his voice and quieted the tumult. What! it surprises you that the question as to whether the basin was a basin or a helmet should have given rise to a general dispute? Other and more involved disputes have broken out in the world with regard to other basins and those not belonging to Mambrino. As to whether bread is bread and wine wine and the like. Human sheep flock round Knights of the Faith and maintain for various reasons or for no reason at all, that the basin is a helmet, as the Knights assert, and they are surprisingly rewarded for so maintaining it, and the strange thing is that most of those who contend that it is a helmet really believe it to be a basin. The heroism of Don Quixote communicated itself to his mockers, who became quixotized in spite of themselves, and Don Fernando made one of the pursuivants measure his length on the ground because he had dared to maintain that the basin was not a helmet but a basin. Heroical Don Fernando!