since historians must and ought to be exact, truthful, and absolutely free of passions, for neither interest, fear, rancor, nor affection should make… - Miguel de Cervantes

... truth, whose mother is history, who is the rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, example and lesson to the present, and warning to the future.

history, rival of time, storehouse of deeds, witness for the past, example and counsel for the present, and warning for the future.

After meat comes mustard; or, like money to a starving man at sea, when there are no victuals to be bought with it.

In short, our gentleman became so caught up in reading that he spent his nights reading from dusk till dawn and his days reading from sunrise to sunset, and so with too little sleep and too much reading his brains dried up, causing him to lose his mind. His fantasy filled with everything he had read in his books, enchantments as well as combats, battles, challenges, wounds, courtings, loves, torments, and other impossible foolishness, and he became so convinced in his imagination of the truth of all the countless grandiloquent and false inventions he read that for him no history in the world was truer. He would say that El Cid Ruy Díaz4 had

Poco desviados de allí hicieron alto estos tres carros, y cesó el enfadoso ruido de sus ruedas, y luego se oyó otro, no ruidoXVIII, sino un son de una suave y concertada música formado, con que Sancho se alegró, y lo tuvo a buena señal, y, así, dijo a la duquesa, de quien un punto ni un paso se apartaba: — Señora, donde hay música no puede haber cosa mala44. — Tampoco donde hay luces y claridad — respondió la duquesa.

A lo que replicó Sancho: — Luz da el fuego, y claridad las hogueras, como lo vemos en las que nos cercan y bien podría ser que nos abrasasen; pero la música siempre es indicio de regocijos y de fiestas.