The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha Part 32

"Item, I const.i.tute and appoint Antonia Quixano, my niece here present, sole heiress of all my estate, real and personal, after all my just debts and legacies, bequeathed by these presents, shall have been paid, satisfied, and deducted, out of the best of my goods and chattels; and the first of that kind to be discharged shall be the salary due to my housekeeper, together with twenty ducats over and above her wages; which said sum I leave and bequeath her to buy her mourning.

"Item, I appoint Mr. Curate, and Mr. Samson Carrasco, the bachelor, here present, to be the executors of this my last will and testament.

"Item, It is my will, that if my niece Antonia Quixano be inclinable to marry, it be with none but a person 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 in such books, and that she persists in her resolution to marry him, she is then to forfeit all right and t.i.tle to my bequest, which, in such a case, my executors are hereby empowered to dispose of to pious uses, as they shall think most proper."

Having finished the will, he fell into a swooning fit. All the company were troubled and alarmed, and ran to his a.s.sistance. However he came to himself at last; but relapsed into the like fits almost every hour, for the s.p.a.ce of three days that he lived after he had made his will.

In short, Don Quixote's last day came, after he had made those preparations for death which good Christians ought to do; and, by many fresh and weighty arguments, shewed his abhorrence of books of knight-errantry. The scrivener, who was by, protested he had never read in any books of that kind of any knight-errant who ever died in his bed so quietly, and like a good Christian, as Don Quixote did.

When the curate perceived that he was dead, he desired the scrivener to give him a certificate how Alonzo Quixano, commonly called _the Good_, and sometimes known by the name of Don Quixote de la Mancha, was departed out of this life into another, and died a natural death.

This he desired, lest any other author but Cid Hamet Benengeli should take occasion to raise him from the dead, and presume to write endless histories of his pretended adventures.

Thus died that ingenious gentleman, Don Quixote de la Mancha, whose native place Cid Hamet has not thought fit directly to mention, with design that all the towns and villages in La Mancha should contend for the honour of giving him birth, as the seven cities of Greece did for Homer. We shall omit Sancho's lamentations, and those of the niece and the housekeeper, as also several epitaphs that were made for his tomb, and will only give you this, which the bachelor Carrasco caused to be put over it:

The body of a knight lies here, So brave, that, to his latest breath, Immortal glory was his care, And made him triumph over death.

Nor has his death the world deceived Less than his wondrous life surprised; For if he like a madman lived, At least he like a wise one died.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Finis.]