My bored reader: without my swearing it, you can be assured that I hope this book, being a child of my mind, will be the most beautiful, the most exciting, and the cleverest that you can imagine. But I haven’t been able to contravene Nature, in which everything creates its own likeness. And so, what could my meager and poorly-cultivated mind create apart from a child who is dry, lifeless, capricious, and full of discordant and extravagant thoughts, as someone would create in a prison cell, where every discomfort has its seat and where every sad sound makes its home?

Calm, pleasant places, the comfort of the countryside, the serenity of the heavens, the murmur of the fountain, the stillness of the spirit, these are a big part of what makes the most sterile of muses become fruitful and give birth to things that shower the world with marvel and happiness. A father may have a child who is ugly and without any grace whatsoever, but the love he has puts a blindfold over his eyes so that he cannot see his child’s faults; he starts to see them as gifts and as beautiful, and he describes them to his friends with flowering words.

But even though I appear to be his father, I am instead stepfather to don Quijote, and so I don’t want to go with tradition or beg, almost with tears in my eyes (like so many others, dear reader), for you to forgive or dismiss the faults that you should see in my son. After all, you’re neither friend nor kin to him, and you have your soul in your body and free will as much as anyone, and you’re in your home, where you are master, like the king of his domain. And you know what they say, a man’s home is his castle. All this exempts and frees you from any deference or obligation, and so you can say whatever you think of this story, without fear of being condemned for whatever bad or praised for whatever good you may say about it.