This is the first of three articles providing a table of contents, summary and selected paintings for the second book of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote.
Cervantes resumes the story with Don Quixote back at home after his second sally. The priest and the barber left him alone to recover for a month, but when they revisited him his madness hadn’t improved, despite the care and attention lavished by his housekeeper and niece. Sancho Panza told his master that the knight had been made famous in a popular book containing an account of his adventures. When his squire went home for a drink and a meal, Don Quixote entertained the young graduate, Sansón Carrasco, who had read that book.
Sancho Panza told the young graduate a rather different story of how his donkey had been stolen from under him as he slept, and how he recovered it from the thief. He also insisted that he had given some money to his family. Don Quixote decided to leave on a third sally in three or four days, heading to Saragossa for jousting. He asked the graduate to write a farewell poem that he could give the lady Dulcinea. Sancho Panza told his wife that they’d soon be leaving, and argued with her over marrying their daughter above her station. Don Quixote’s housekeeper and niece had been trying to discover what was going on when Sancho arrived, and the two men shut themselves away to plan this next sally.
25 Preparing for the third sally
Don Quixote’s niece and housekeeper thought they could enlist the help of the young graduate to stop the knight from leaving on his third sally, but instead he egged him on. After his master refused to offer him a fixed wage, Sancho Panza was obliged to provide his services for the vague promise of a bounty. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza then left at nightfall and headed for El Toboso for the lady Dulcinea to give the knight her blessing, but when they reached the town neither of them knew where to find her. Sancho persuaded his master to hide a couple of miles out of town in a wood, so he could go back to try to find the lady.
Don Quixote sent Sancho Panza to go into the city of El Toboso to locate the Lady Dulcinea, but the squire realised that his mission was impossible. He bumped into three local peasant girls, and deceived his master into thinking they were the lady and her two maids disguised by an enchanter to deprive the knight of seeing his lady’s beauty. Duped into believing that this part of his mission had been accomplished, the pair rode on towards Saragossa. They then met an open cart full of players in costume, and a clown scared Rocinante to bolt and throw Don Quixote. Another player rode Sancho’s donkey away, as a result of which Don Quixote threatened the troupe. As they were getting ready to stone the knight, Sancho persuaded his master to let the matter rest. The cart moved on again, and the knight and his squire continued on their way unharmed for once.
Soon after Don Quixote and Sancho Panza had fallen asleep that night they were woken up by the arrival of another knight and his squire. Hearing one another, they introduced themselves, and the two squires went off to compare their masters. They agreed that they were hard done by, and drank and ate together until they fell asleep. The two knights spoke about their ladies, and their conflicting claims of their beauty drove Don Quixote to challenge the other knight to a duel at dawn. When that time came, Don Quixote did everything right, but the other knight failed completely and was tossed from his mount to the ground. It then turned out that the Knight of the Spangles was none other than the young graduate Sansón Carrasco, and his squire was Sancho’s neighbour wearing a false nose. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza resumed their journey towards Saragossa, leaving the two imposters nursing their wounds.
28 Duel with the Knight of the Spangles
Don Quixote revelled in his victory in combat over the Knight of the Spangles, unaware that it had all been a set-up to send him back to his village. Meanwhile the defeated young graduate swore vengeance once his injuries had healed. The knight and his squire met another hidalgo, Don Diego, riding back to his village, and were conversing as they came across a cart bearing two lions as a gift to the King. When the knight donned his helmet to deal with this, his face was drenched in the whey from some curds Sancho Panza had put there temporarily. Don Quixote demanded to confront the lions to show what sort of man he was. With everyone else at a safe distance, one of the crates was opened, but the lion inside it wasn’t interested and lay down without coming out. With the knight’s valour proven, the cart went on its way, and the three travellers arrived in Don Diego’s village by about two o’clock in the afternoon.
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza enjoyed several days rest in luxury at the villa of a hidalgo they had met on the road. Soon after leaving his village, they met two students and two farmers riding asses back from shopping in a town. The students quickly concluded that the knight was mad, but he only confused the farmers. The students invited them to attend a wedding in their village, but fell to arguing, and one challenged the other to a fencing duel. The underdog quickly fell exhausted, then the pair made up and rode on. They arrived in the village as it was getting dark, and saw lanterns festooned from the trees, while hearing music from many different instruments. Don Quixote refused to sleep in the village, and took Sancho Panza away for them to sleep rough in a field outside.
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza rose early and went into the village where huge quantities of food were being cooked for the wedding feast. As the knight watched displays in honour of the couple who were to be married, his squire acquired himself a free breakfast. When the bride and groom reached the platform where they were to be married, her first suitor appeared. He confronted her, saying she wasn’t free to marry anyone else while he was still alive. He then proceeded to solve that problem for her by impaling himself on a rapier. He persuaded her to marry him as his dying wish, but once that brief ceremony was completed he sprang back to life, as this had all been an elaborate illusion in which the bride seemed complicit. Don Quixote quickly restored order, the former groom accepted the situation and declaring the feast should continue. The newlywed couple left the village immediately, taking Don Quixote with them. A reluctant Sancho Panza followed, dismayed at leaving all that food and wine behind.
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza were entertained by the newly married couple for three days, during which the knight arranged himself a guide to take them on to the Cave of Montesinos and the Lakes of Ruidera; the guide turned out to be the author of books on chivalry. Sancho and the guide lowered Don Quixote into the cave, and paid out the rope to which he was attached. After half an hour, they hauled it back in, but when the knight reached the mouth of the cave he was deeply asleep. They woke him, and he told them that he had been shown round a crystal castle, and had seen the three girls whom they had met outside El Toboso, and one of them really was his Lady Dulcinea after all. Knowing the truth behind his earlier subterfuge, Sancho didn’t believe a word.
Don Quixote, Sancho Panza and their guide made their way towards an inn near the Cave of Montesinos following its descent by the knight. They were passed by a man hurrying along a mule loaded with lances and halberds. After they tried a nearby hermitage, the three reached the inn, where the man with the mule explained his weapons were to arm a village which had taken to braying like a donkey, against others who were persecuting them. Next Don Pedro, a well-known puppeteer with a performing ape, arrived and was made welcome. Don Quixote was convinced that Pedro had made a pact with the devil when he revealed he knew much about the knight’s errantry. All those at the inn then went to watch Don Pedro’s puppet theatre.
33 The village of braying, and a performing ape
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza went to the performance of Don Pedro’s puppet theatre, and when the Moors went after a Christian couple, Don Quixote ran amok, smashing the puppets to pieces with his sword. Don Pedro was heartbroken, but the knight paid him compensation for the damage. The following morning they went their separate ways, the knight and his squire heading off to see the River Ebro. It’s revealed that Don Pedro was one of the convicts in the chain-gang that Don Quixote had freed, who had also stolen Sancho’s donkey earlier. A couple of days later, the pair came across the villagers who brayed, now organised into an army two hundred strong. When Sancho offended them by braying, he was knocked to the ground and Don Quixote was forced to flee, with Sancho laid on his donkey.
34 The puppet massacre and a retreat
Sancho Panza was in pain after he had been beaten by the villagers who brayed, but Don Quixote just told him off for upsetting them. A couple of days later the pair reached the River Ebro, where the knight found a boat and decided that they’d drift over in it to some large watermills, which he was sure was a fortress holding a victim captive. Their boat became entrained in the mill race putting their lives in immediate danger. The millers tried to fend the boat away but ended up capsizing it, then rescuing the pair from drowning in the river. When they had compensated the owners of the boat, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza returned to their mounts, leaving the millers standing in amazement.
Further reading
Wikipedia
List of characters
English translation by John Ormsby (1885)
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, trans John Rutherford (1604, 2000) Don Quixote, Penguin, ISBN 978 0 140 44909 9.
Roberto González Echevarría (2015) Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Yale UP, ISBN 978 0 300 19864 5.
Roberto González Echevarría (ed) (2005) Cervantes’ Don Quixote, A Casebook, Oxford UP, ISBN 978 0 19 516938 6.
The Eclectic Light Company 