The good Alonso Quixano went on with the dictation of his will and bequeathed all his estate to Antonia Quixano, his niece, but imposing it upon her, as a necessary condition of enjoying the bequest, that “if she is desirous of marrying, she marry none but a man who, upon strict inquiry, shall be found never to have read a book of knight-errantry in his life; and in case it appears that he has been conversant with such books, and that she persists in her resolution to marry him, she is then to forfeit all that I have bequeathed her, which in such case my executors shall dispose of to pious uses at their own discretion.” How clearly Don Quixote recognized the violent mutual incompatibility that exists between the office of husband and that of knight-errant! And in dictating this clause, may not the good knight have been thinking of his Aldonza and of how, had he but ventured to break the seal of his too great love, he might have been spared all the misfortunes of his knight-errantry and remained by his own fireside a happy prisoner in the arms of his love? Your will has been faithfully executed, Don Quixote, and the young men of this your country have renounced all knight-errantry so that they might enjoy the estates of your nieces--and among these must be counted almost all the women of Spain--and enjoy the nieces themselves too. In their arms all heroism is smothered. They tremble lest it should strike their lovers and husbands with its rushing wind as it struck their uncle. It is your niece, Don Quixote, it is your niece who rules and governs Spain to-day--it is your niece, not Sancho. It is the timorous, home-keeping, narrow-souled Antonia Quixano, she who feared lest you should turn poet, “a catching and incurable disease”; she who so zealously assisted the curate and the barber in burning your books; she who presumed to tell you to your face that all stories of knight-errantry were nothing but a pack of lies and fables--a maidenly audacity which provoked you to exclaim: “By the God that sustains me, wert thou not my proper niece, my own sister’s daughter, I would take such revenge for the blasphemy thou hast uttered as would resound through the whole world”; it is she, “the young baggage who scarce knows how to manage a dozen lace-work bobbins,” and who presumed to put in her oar and censure the histories of knights-errant, it is she who manages and dangles and juggles with the sons of your Spain as if they were puppets. It is not Dulcinea del Toboso, no. Neither is it Aldonza Lorenzo, she for whom you sighed for twelve years without seeing her more than four times and without ever confessing your love. It is Antonia Quixano, she who scarce knew how to manage a dozen lace-work bobbins, who controls your countrymen to-day.