This is the third and final article providing a table of contents, summary and selected paintings for the second book of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote.
The Duke and Duchess arranged a proxy for the suitor to the old duenna’s daughter, to fight on his behalf with Don Quixote. As he rode away from his governorship, Sancho Panza bumped into a group of pilgrims, among whom was his village’s former shopkeeper, a Moor who was being persecuted. He’d returned from sanctuary in Germany to recover the riches he’d buried, but Sancho refused to help him. As darkness fell, the squire and his donkey fell into a deep pit connected to underground passages, from which they were rescued the following morning by the Duke’s staff. Sancho then gave account of his time as governor and his resignation to the Duke and Duchess.
The Duke schooled the proxy who was to fight Don Quixote in a duel, to ensure he would defeat the knight without injuring him. On the agreed day, a platform was built for all the spectators, then the Master of Ceremonies took over and sent the opponents to their places. When a trumpet blast signalled them to begin their charges, Don Quixote started his, but the proxy told the Master of Ceremonies that he had already been defeated, as he’d fallen in love with the duenna’s daughter and wanted to marry her. This was agreed, and Don Quixote’s bloodless victory was acclaimed by all.
The knight requested permission of his noble hosts to resume his journey to Saragossa, which they granted with sadness. As Don Quixote and Sancho Panza were departing, the maid Altisidora sang a lament in which she accused the knight of taking nightcaps and garters from her. Finally the pair got away.
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza first came across farmers carrying wood carvings for their village altarpiece. Next they met two young women and a brother who were creating a new Arcadia in the woods. After lunching with them, the pair put themselves in the middle of the road just as a herd of bulls were being driven along it. As the knight refused to move, he and Sancho were trampled by them.
They washed off the dust in a spring, where they ate again before travelling on to an inn. In spite of offering them whatever they wanted, the innkeeper could only provide them some grim cow-heel stew. They overheard two men in the next room discussing the second book about Don Quixote. When the knight told them he was next door, they came round and invited them to dine with them on their better fare. Their discussion of what was recorded in the book deterred Don Quixote from going on to Saragossa, so the following morning the pair headed for Barcelona instead.
As they started for Barcelona, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza came to blows when the knight decided he’d help his squire reach his goal of three thousand lashes in order to disenchant the lady Dulcinea. They then discovered they were among the hanging bodies of outlaws. Just as they were about to leave in the morning, they were surrounded by bandits who were soon relieving them of their possessions. Their captain arrived, and stopped the robbery. After him came a young woman who had shot her lover, and they aided her as her lover died in her arms. Following three days with the outlaws, Don Quixote, Sancho Panza and their captain rode to Barcelona’s beach. In the morning the pair rode into the city, but not before they were thrown from their mounts by a children’s prank.
50 With outlaws into Barcelona
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza were welcomed into the home of Don Antonio in Barcelona. After the knight and his squire had entertained their host’s friends at lunch, Don Antonio took Don Quixote into a room and showed him an enchanted bust which he claimed gave a truthful answer to any question put to it, except on that day of the week.
That night Don Quixote danced at a ball thrown by Don Antonio’s wife, until he was exhausted. The next day they went to ask questions of the enchanted bust, which it answered skilfully while avoiding commitment, so impressing Don Quixote but not his squire. Although the pair never discovered the truth, the bust was just an elaborate deception. Another morning the pair visited a printing-house, where the knight condemned copies of the second part of Don Quixote as being fit only for burning.
Don Antonio next took Don Quixote and Sancho Panza to visit the galleys moored off Barcelona’s beach. They were welcomed on board by their commodore, and his crew delighted in rolling Sancho fore and aft on their arms. The ships were despatched to a suspicious brigantine, which tried to escape but abandoned its attempt when it was obviously outclassed. Two of the brigantine’s crew shot dead a couple of the galley’s soldiers, so that crew were arrested and their vessel towed back to Barcelona.
As they were about to be hanged from the yard, the brigantine’s captain revealed she was a young woman. She explained she had Moriscan parents and had ended up in Algiers, with her lover a captive of the king. She had then been returned to Spain, but wanted to rescue her lover. This saved her neck, she was reunited with her father, and a rescue mission set out for her lover.
Later when Don Quixote was riding on the beach in full armour, he was challenged by the Knight of the White Moon, whose only satisfaction was that Don Quixote returned to his village in peace for a year. Don Quixote was knocked to the ground and lost that duel, so was compelled to agree to the other knight’s demand.
Don Antonio discovered that the Knight of the White Moon was Sansón Carrasco, the young graduate from the same village. Don Quixote stayed in bed for six days, while Don Antonio went to Madrid to seek a solution for the rescued Moriscans who were staying with him. Two days later, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza left Barcelona, still lamenting their past losses.
Five days later Sancho successfully adjudicated an argument between two locals in a village. The next day they met a foot messenger from the Duke and Duchess, who turned out to be the proxy who had cried off fighting Don Quixote. After Sancho Panza shared the messenger’s wine and cheese, he caught up with Don Quixote and they travelled homeward again.
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza turned off the road to rest for the night. Sancho slept well until his restless master woke him up to tell him to lash himself to make progress with the disenchantment of the lady Dulcinea, but his squire refused. They heard the distant din of a herd of over six hundred pigs being driven towards them, and were soon knocked over and trampled by the swine. In the morning they went on their way, and just before sunset met ten armed men who abducted them in silence, taking them in the dark to the Duke and Duchess’s castle.
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza arrived in the courtyard of the Duke and Duchess’s castle to find it brightly lit by torches. In the middle was the body of Altisidora on a catafalque. Servants dressed Sancho in a black cloak with flames, and a conical hat decorated with devils. A youth sang the maid’s praise, then one of two kings present told Sancho that he had to be punished in order to resurrect the dead woman. Despite his protests, six duennas struck him on the nose, he was pinched, and pricked with pins. Altisidora revived miraculously, and Don Quixote and his squire retired to their bedroom.
Once Sancho had fallen asleep, the maid walked in and threw Don Quixote into confusion. She described seeing a dozen devils playing pelota with books at the gates of hell, before revealing that her death had been faked. After the Duke and Duchess entered the bedroom, Don Quixote begged his leave. Once they had dined with their hosts, the pair left.
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza rode away from the Duke and Duchess’s castle, each with their own regrets. When they stopped to rest after dark, Sancho resumed lashing himself in penance, but quickly realised that he could lash the trees around him without suffering any pain. Eventually, with more than a thousand of these bogus lashes behind him, Don Quixote implored him to stop.
The pair later rode on to the next inn, which the knight didn’t claim was an enchanted castle. There they bumped into one of the characters from the published second book of Don Quixote, and persuaded him to sign a declaration that the two of them weren’t the Don Quixote and Sancho Panza described in that book.
They got on their way again that evening, and once they had pulled off the road to rest, Sancho all but completed his penance, which he achieved the following night. After that they reached the hill above their village, where Sancho fell on his knees and welcomed the sight of home at last.
As they entered their village a hunted hare sheltered under Sancho’s donkey before Don Quixote returned it to the huntsmen. They were welcomed by the priest and Sansón Carrasco, before the pair went home at last. Sancho’s wife was delighted with his money, and Don Quixote’s niece and housekeeper pampered the former knight. Don Quixote told the priest and Carrasco of his defeat on Barcelona beach.
Don Quixote then had a fever for six days, but the doctor was unable to help, and he started to lapse into long periods of unconsciousness. During a wakeful phase he first called for the priest to hear his confession, then the notary and Sancho Panza to make his will. That left his estate to his niece, provided that she didn’t marry someone who knew about books of chivalry. Don Quixote survived three more days before dying peacefully in his bed.
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 