Don Quixote Part 1, Chapter 13 - 24

The following morning, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are escorted to the burial of Grisostomo. They encounter another group of goatherds that is leading some riders to the burial, and these gentlemen engage Don Quixote in conversation given his odd garb. Don Quixote proudly claims himself to be a Knight-errant, a fact that assures his listeners that he is quite mad, yet one gentleman chooses to entertain himself by questioning Don Quixote of his chosen vocation. Don Quixote goes into a lengthy discussion of knighthood and focuses particularly on the obsession of knights with the ladies that they love due to the interviewer's interest. Upon a further nudge from the gentlemen, Don Quixote talks of Dulcinea del Toboso as he claims that she is certain to be a princess at least, though he infers that she may not be pleased to know of his ardor for her. The group arrives at the gathering of the mourners where they read the last words of the perished goatherd. They recite the Lay of Grisostomo which labels Marcela as a cold and uncaring beauty that brought him to his death with her disdain. Once the poem has been recited, the shepherdess Marcella appears before the assembly of herders and disparages them all for laying the blame for Grisostomo’s death upon her.

She tells them all that she had never once given Grisostomo any notion of interest, and though he had loved her, she could not rightly love him simply for the fact that he loved her. She told them all that she had not chosen to be beautiful, and thus could not be held accountable for all those that loved her for her beauty but received no return for their emotion. Marcella departs after telling the herders her desire, and disappears into the woods, while some of the mesmerized herders attempt to follow her. Don Quixote is deeply moved by Marcella’s words and prevents all of them from following her, but follows her himself when the rest of the men have departed. Quixote and Sancho search through the woods for the shepherdess but are hard-pressed in finding any trace of her, so they decide to rest and release their mounts in an open field. Rocinante becomes aroused by the presence of mares that have been similarly relieved by a large group of carriers, and the frail horse attempts to mount some of the mares. He is rewarded with blows from the carriers as they notice his disturbance of their mounts, and their attack brings on retaliation from Don Quixote as well as the reluctant Sancho Panza. They are both reduced to the same state as Rocinante when more than a dozen carriers rain blows on them with their sticks, and depart quickly afterward. 

Quixote admonishes Sancho and informs him that henceforth he should raise his arms against the common folk while Don Quixote would raise his sword only against enemy knights. He believes that they have borne a loss in battle because he went against the precepts of chivalry. Sancho Panza protests, but carries his master to a nearby inn by slinging him over his ass like a sack of rubbish. They arrive at an inn, which Don Quixote believes is a castle, and are aided by the Innkeeper, his wife, their daughter, and a servant girl. They plaster Don Quixote and his squire and retire for the night. Don Quixote’s delusion makes him believe that the daughter of the castle’s lord has promised to see him in the night, and he mistakes the servant for this princess when she comes to their darkened room to see a carrier lodged therein. Quixote grabs the woman and proceeds to lavish imagined praises on her while she struggles to free herself.

The carrier witnesses Quixote’s forced capture of the girl and thrashes him quite soundly. This causes a racket that brings the innkeeper to the loft and it leads to a scuffle between the woman, carrier, Sancho Panza, and the innkeeper. In the darkness of the loft, all of the occupants except Don Quixote are soundly beaten, until an officer of the Holy Brotherhood who happens to be lodging at the inn, is roused by the noise and mistakes Don Quixote to be dead. All of the combatants scatter when the alarm is raised leaving Don Quixote alone with Sancho Panza, both of whom are now more injured than they had been before. Don Quixote asks Sancho to gather ingredients for the balsam and Sancho gains the officer’s help in securing the ingredients. Don Quixote prepares the balsam and consumes it, but it causes him to vomit quite severely. He recovers after a couple of hours and claims that the balsam has worked, yet when Sancho uses it, his health is worsened significantly. Eventually, he recovers, and both of them head back to the road but they are accosted by the innkeeper who demands payment for lodging and food. Don Quixote flees without paying as he claims that Knights-Errant do not pay for food and shelter, but Sancho gets left behind and receives punishment from other patrons. He is finally allowed to leave when the people of the inn have tried themselves in toying with him although Don Quixote attempts to rescue him.

Sancho is finally allowed to leave when the cloth teasers have had their fun tossing him in the air. Sancho meets his master outside the inn gates, and Don Quixote apologizes for being unable to aid Sancho as he claims that their enemies must surely have been enchanters for they had prevented him from aiding his squire. Sancho dismisses this claim and asks his master to return home as he has had quite enough of the misadventures that have befallen them. Don Quixote calms him down by telling him that their fortune is certain to turn soon, and they notice two great dust clouds. Don Quixote claims that these dust clouds are being raised by two enemy forces who are about to begin a battle, and tells Sancho of an imagined feud between these fictitious forces. The pair of them climb a nearby hill to observe the battle better and are unable to see that the dust is being raised by two herds of sheep. Don Quixote gives Sancho incredibly detailed descriptions of knights that he believes he sees in the armies, and soon charges into aid one side, but Sancho realizes the truth of the dust clouds. He tries to point it out to his master but his words are not heeded as Don Quixote rushes into the herd and begins killing sheep with his lance. He is rewarded by the shepherds who pelt him with slings and fell him from his horse before quickly departing with their herds. Don Quixote tells Sancho that the magician had turned the enemy forces into the illusion of sheep herds, and vomits on Sancho Panza while he is examining his master’s injured mouth and missing teeth. He vomits on Don Quixote in return when he realizes that his master had vomited the Balsam on him. Sancho Panza is nearly resolved to quit his role right there and then but Don Quixote manages to assuage him.

Don Quixote and his quire came upon a truly terrifying vision as they struggled to locate an inn to appease their hunger and thirst. They saw from a distance an array of lights that became bigger as they came nearer, and the pair of them were convinced that they were seeing ghosts. Soon the lights resolved themselves into torches held aloft by a large company of men in horseback, all of whom were draped in white cloth. They were escorting a bier that intrigued Don Quixote as he believed that it carried a man who needed to be avenged, either against those that escorted his remains or alongside them. He halts their progress and puts them to question about their business but they are all too much in a hurry to answer him to any degree of satisfaction. Don Quixote attacks them with fervor and manages to route all of the unarmed riders, who fled along with the men on foot. One of the men falls under his mule and breaks his leg, and through him, Don Quixote learns that he had belonged to a group of priests who were escorting the remains of a man who had died of natural causes. Don Quixote regrets breaking the man’s leg, sets him on his mule, ushers him to follow his friends, and leaves the corpse in the middle of the road as he takes to the hills with Sancho Panza who has looted the supply mule that the priests had left behind. Sancho Panza dubs his master as the Knight of the Sorry face, a title that Don Quixote readily accepts.

The pair of them dine heartily on the supplies, and ride further to search for a source of water in the darkness, they soon began hearing a ringing clamor along with a thundering. They are convinced that they have entered some severe peril, and Don Quixote prepares to leave Sancho for fear of his safety but the squire contrives to keep his master by his side till the morning by tying Rocinante’s hind legs secretly. As dawn begins to rise, the pair discover that the thundering had been the sound of a waterfall that powered a fulling mill which was the source of the terrible clamoring. This amuses Sancho greatly and he begins to laugh heartily at his master’s speech from the previous night. This offends Don Quixote and he admonishes Sancho Panza for disrespecting him and counsels him to be respectful. Don Quixote then sees a rider on the road and imagines it to be a knight wearing Mambrino’s helmet on horseback when it is a barber riding a mule with a brass basin over his head as is pointed out by an exasperated Sancho. Don Quixote charges the man with his lance without a word of warning, and the barber escapes with his life, leaving behind both mule and basin, which Don Quixote wears over his head in the continued belief that it is Mambrino’s helmet.

The pair then stumble upon a chained group of convicts who are being forced to march to serve as rowers on galleys for the Spanish king. Don Quixote asks the convicts to tell him of their crimes and decides that they ought not to be treated as slaves. He strikes down the only guard with the firearm, and the convicts help him fight the other guards, who are all routed in short order. This freed mob of convicts then turns on their rescuers and pelts both Don Quixote and his squire with many a stone before fleeing in fear of the Holy Brotherhood who would be sure to seek them out. Don Quixote retreats rather reluctantly at the words of an afraid Sancho but they soon come across a saddlebag filled with gold and a journal that contains sonnets as well love letters of a jilted lover. As they continue to ride, they see a man jumping across crags with the appearance of having lived in the wild for several months. They come across the corpse of a donkey in a remote part of the Sierra where they encounter a goatherd who tells them of a young and handsome nobleman who had come to this region some six months ago. The young man had remained hidden most of the time but had recently begun to attack goat herds for food.

Just as the goatherd finishes his description, the young madman appears, and he is warmly greeted by Don Quixote. The young man, Cardenio, is moved by the knight’s warmth and requests that he be informed of the nature of Cardenio's grief so that the knight could either right the circumstances or mourn their occurrence. The man informs Don Quixote that he had been raised in a family of good wealth, and had loved a girl who had been of a similar background. He had been forced to delay his proposal for the girl's marriage by a summons from the duke who had sought him as a companion for his sons. Cardenio had grown particularly close with the Duke’s younger son, Ferdino, who had at the time been obsessed with a young farmer’s girl. The young man had married the girl in his lust but had now grown weary of her and decided to accompany Cardenio to his hometown. Cardenio began to notice that the duke’s son now became obsessed with his love, however, he was interrupted in his telling by Don Quixote who got excited at the mention of a chivalry book. Cardenio suddenly attacks Don Quixote and flees.

Analysis

Don Quixote focuses on the art of storytelling, as nearly all of the characters in the novel have a story that they wish to communicate. The numerous background stories that the supporting characters narrate can be rather disruptive since they don't have a significant impact on the main plotline of Don Quixote but rather provide us with an additional understanding of the context of the novel. Cervantes is masterful in bringing even these peripheral characters to life. The first story of the beautiful shepherdess Marcela introduces the pastoral social class of the goatherds. Social class is a dominant theme of the novel, as characters often behave in a specific manner that is stereotypical to their class. This first story also delves into exploring the credibility of tales as the real Marcella differs quite significantly from what the recently deceased lover and his best friend describe. Marcella addresses the people of the funeral and easily establishes that she is significantly different from what had been described in the sonnets and accusations.

The second story featuring Cardenio becomes one of the major subplots in this first part of the history that Cervantes weaves through the tapestry of his novel. It is evident that he had not been quite meticulous in ensuring that all of the details were looked after since he forgot to organize the section that deals with the theft of Sancho's donkey. The second story has the effect of inspiring Don Quixote to perform penance to better emulate the books of chivalry, thereby mocking Cardenio's plight.