a long way

Idle reader, you will believe me, without requiring an oath, if I tell you that I would like this book, as the child of my intelligence, to be the most beautiful, the most elegant and the most witty that could be imagined; but, alas! I have not been able to contravene the laws of nature, which dictates that each being engenders its fellow. Thus, what could a sterile and poorly cultivated mind like mine engender, if not the story of a dry, thin, stunted, whimsical son, full of strange thoughts that no one else had conceived, such as could be engendered in a prison, where every discomfort has its seat, where every noise sinister makes his home? Leisure and rest, the peace of the abode, the amenity of the fields, the serenity of the skies, the murmur of the fountains, the calm of the mind, all these things combine to make the most sterile muses appear fertile, and offer to the delighted world marvelous fruits which fill it with satisfaction. If it happens that a father has an ugly and graceless son, the love he bears for this child puts a blindfold over his eyes so that he does not see his faults; on the contrary, he takes them for sallies, kindnesses, and tells his friends about them as charming traits of wit and malice. But I, who am, although I appear to be the true father, only the putative father of Don Quixote, I do not want to follow the current of custom, nor beg you, almost with tears in my eyes, as others do, very dear reader, to forgive or excuse the defects that you will see in this child, whom I present to you as mine. Since you are neither his relative nor his friend; since you have your soul in your