The landlord was carrying away the valise and the books, but the curate said to him, “Wait; I want to see what those papers are that are written in such a good hand.”  The landlord taking them out handed them to him to read, and he perceived they were a work of about eight sheets of manuscript, with, in large letters at the beginning, the title of “Novel of the Ill-advised Curiosity.”  The curate read three or four lines to himself, and said, “I must say the title of this novel does not seem to me a bad one, and I feel an inclination to read it all.”  To which the landlord replied, “Then your reverence will do well to read it, for I can tell you that some guests who have read it here have been much pleased with it, and have begged it of me very earnestly; but I would not give it, meaning to return it to the person who forgot the valise, books, and papers here, for maybe he will return here some time or other; and though I know I shall miss the books, faith I mean to return them; for though I am an innkeeper, still I am a Christian.”

“You are very right, friend,” said the curate; “but for all that, if the novel pleases me you must let me copy it.”

“With all my heart,” replied the host.

While they were talking Cardenio had taken up the novel and begun to read it, and forming the same opinion of it as the curate, he begged him to read it so that they might all hear it.

“I would read it,” said the curate, “if the time would not be better spent in sleeping.”

“It will be rest enough for me,” said Dorothea, “to while away the time by listening to some tale, for my spirits are not yet tranquil enough to let me sleep when it would be seasonable.”

“Well then, in that case,” said the curate, “I will read it, if it were only out of curiosity; perhaps it may contain something pleasant.”

Master Nicholas added his entreaties to the same effect, and Sancho too; seeing which, and considering that he would give pleasure to all, and receive it himself, the curate said, “Well then, attend to me everyone, for the novel begins thus.”

CHAPTER XXXIII.

IN WHICH IS RELATED THE NOVEL OF “THE ILL-ADVISED CURIOSITY”

In Florence, a rich and famous city of Italy in the province called Tuscany, there lived two gentlemen of wealth and quality, Anselmo and Lothario, such great friends that by way of distinction they were called by all that knew them “The Two Friends.”  They were unmarried, young, of the same age and of the same tastes, which was enough to account for the reciprocal friendship between them.  Anselmo, it is true, was somewhat more inclined to seek pleasure in love than Lothario, for whom the pleasures of the chase had more attraction; but on occasion Anselmo would forego his own tastes to yield to those of Lothario, and Lothario would surrender his to fall in with those of Anselmo, and in this way their inclinations kept pace one with the other with a concord so perfect that the best regulated clock could not surpass it.