Some three or four hundred years ago, there lived in sunny Spain anold gentleman named Quixada, who owned a house and a small propertynear a village in La Mancha.With him lived his niece, a housekeeper, and a man who looked afterQuixada's farm and his one old white horse, which, though its masterimagined it to be an animal of great strength and beauty, was reallyas lean as Quixada himself and as broken down as any old cab horse.Quixada had nothing in the world to do in the shape of work, and so,his whole time was taken up in reading old books about knights andgiants, and ladies shut up in enchanted castles by wicked ogres. Intime, so fond did he become of such tales that he passed his days, andeven the best part of his nights, in reading them. His mind was sowholly taken up in this way that at last he came to believe that hehimself lived in a land of giants and of ogres, and that it was hisduty to ride forth on his noble steed, to the rescue of unhappyPrincesses.