There was a household name in Spain. He had originally been a country nobleman, living in an age when knights had long vanished. Though not wealthy, he could generally keep himself going.
He had a hobby: he loved reading chivalric romances and often imagined himself as a knight-errant who upheld justice. So, at the age of fifty, he dubbed himself "Don Quixote de La Mancha," meaning the protector of La Mancha. Then he mounted a gaunt horse, took up an old shield and lance, and set off to win glory with his neighbor, who was to become the "governor of an island."
In chivalric romances, knights always had a beloved. So Don Quixote imitated the knights in his books and paid compliments to a peasant girl—or rather, to the incomparably delicate, peerless beauty he saw in her.
The peasant girl was nowhere near as foolish and mad as Don Quixote. Spurned by his "beloved," Don Quixote then imitated the knights in novels and became wan and sorrowful.
Everyone else took him for a madman or toyed with him like a clown. Later, he returned to his hometown and, struck down by disappointment, soon took to his bed. He came to his senses then, but after leaving his will, he said one more thing: "How can a knight die in bed?"
The author of this novel, Cervantes, lived through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. After Columbus "discovered" the Americas, Magellan, with the support of Spain's Charles V, completed humanity's first circumnavigation of the globe. He first reached Brazil, then passed through a strait and arrived at the Pacific Ocean.
At the time, spices were Europe's most sought-after goods. Beyond the Age of Discovery, Magellan's voyage was also meant to find the "Spice Islands." Unlike Columbus, Magellan did not return. After his