ABSTRACT
While I was by myself the other day, quietly resting and thinking in my room, where I usually stay when I want to be in good company - not that of the men now living, for few of them know how to be good company, but that of the dead ones who surpassed them in virtue, learning, great enterprise and high intellect, who never abandoned those who wanted to converse with them or deny them the benefits of the great heritage they have left them, but on the contrary invited them incessantly to use it (although you could find among us many who would gladly alienate it if they could - but I think that if they had the power to do so, they would find few buyers, for a thing is neither prized nor desired now unless it is pleasing to the senses or profitable to the purse) - a great friend of mine came, whose name is Ramon, a man not of great learning but of sound mind and memory.1 I have reasons to conceal his surname. After he had knocked a few times at the door - for I did not want to open it for fear of being disturbed -1 knew from the way he went on knocking that he was in a hurry, and I opened the door.
