Don Quixote Part 2, Chapter 25 - 36
Don Quixote rushed to meet the arms merchant, who was still caring for his mules and eagerly extracted from him the story of the village Bray. The merchant explained that two councilors from his village had gone in search of a missing jack-ass, and had attempted to find him by going in different directions all the while braying to attract the missing animal. Their brays had been so good that rather than finding the animal they had merely found one another, and both had remarked upon the other’s unique ability at braying. This account had spread among the other surrounding villages, who had now taken to teasing the villagers by braying at them. The situation had devolved quickly and now the villagers of Bray often went out with arms to silence the other villages, as they were going to do in just a few short days which was why the merchant was in such a hurry. The innkeeper soon has another guest, Master Pedro, who is famed for his puppet show as well as a fortune-telling ape.
Master Pedro arrives with his ape and explains that it does not tell the future but rather the present and the past. Don Quixote has Sancho Panza pay the man, and ask about his wife Teresa. The ape jumps onto Master Pedro’s shoulder and whispers something that causes him to fall at Don Quixote’s knee while singing praises of his work as a knight errant. Master Pedro also reassures a stunned Sancho that his wife, Teresa, is doing well at their home in the village, and declares that he’ll be putting on a puppet show for free in honor of Don Quixote. As Master Pedro withdraws, Don Quixote confesses his belief that Master Pedro and the ape have made a pact with the devil that allows them to see the present and past. As Master Pedro returns, Don Quixote at Sancho’s insistence asks the ape whether what he had experienced in the cave had been real or a consequence of his dreams. Master Pedro says that some of what had transpired had been in his dreams but some of it had also occurred. The puppet show about Don Gaiferos’s rescue of his wife Melisendra begins and is often interrupted by Don Quixote who shouts corrections and objections at the players. The puppet show comes to an end rather violently as Don Quixote jumps in to halt the pursuit of the two lovers and attacks the moor puppets with his sword. He nearly decapitates master Pedro in the process and the matter is only concluded when Don Quixote provides master Pedro compensation for all the puppets that he destroys.
Cide Hamete explains that Master Pedro had been Ginés de Pasamonte, one of the worst criminals that Don Quixote had freed from being taken to the galleys, who was now conning people with the trick of the fortune-telling ape. Don Quixote and Sancho take to the road and encounter the army of village Bray which is ready to take to the field in defense of their honor. Don Quixote attempts to explain that the people mocking them by braying cannot besmirch the honor of the whole village and argues that to take to war over such a cause was unchristian. Sancho attempts to reinforce his master’s point by commenting that braying is never dishonorable and suddenly begins to bray loudly. The villagers beat Sancho senseless while Don Quixote escapes for dear life and stops a short way away when he sees that Sancho is allowed to leave. Sancho is quite upset that his master did not defend him against the villagers but Don Quixote argues that it would have been foolhardy to do so. Sancho then insists that he wishes to return home to his family and desires that his wages be accounted for so that he could collect them and leave. Don Quixote admonishes him severely for his disloyalty after he offers him all the gold he has in possession, and Sancho retracts his request.
The next morning, Don Quixote and Sancho get onto a fisherman’s boat as Don Quixote insists that they are being summoned for help through the boat. The boat slowly descends the river and begins to approach a water mill. The flour-covered millers notice this and barely rescue the pair from being crushed by overturning the boat. The cursing millers then rescue the squire and the knight, who laments that the enchanters in the world are working at cross purposes so that the people he had wished to rescue from the fortress, that appeared to be a watermill, had been hidden from him. The fisherman wails for the loss of his boat, and Sancho compensates the man with gold at Don Quixote’s instruction. They then come across some people who are hawking, and Don Quixote notes that the leader of the group is a noble lady as he makes note of her hawk. Don Quixote sends Sancho to request an audience with the lady and specifically asks him to speak fairly unlike his normal speech. Sancho introduces his master’s request in the most flowery language to the lady, who surprises him by being aware of the Knight of the Sorry Face. She invites Don Quixote to meet with her and her husband the duke. Don Quixote’s first meeting with the royal pair is ruined as Sancho falls in his eagerness to dismount which causes Don Quixote to collapse from the horse along with the saddle.
The duke and duchess are quite pleased to encounter the famous duo so they send word to their household that Don Quixote must be accorded all the respect that had been accorded the fictitious knights from those books of chivalry. Sancho finds that the duchess was quite fond of him, and his master overheard the squire arguing with one of the maids about the welfare of his ass. Later, Don Quixote admonishes Sancho for behaving so brashly in the presence of the royal couple before they were escorted to dinner with great pomp. The dinner party included the Duke, the duchess, Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, and a churchman. The dinner started rather poorly for the knight as his squire launched into a most horrendous anecdotal tale at the encouragement of the now giddy duchess. The churchman deduced that the guest of honor was the same knight whose book the duke had read so often. The churchman insulted Don Quixote as being insane, but Don Quixote rose to his arguments and defended his vocation of knight-errantry as both noble and necessary for the world. The churchman stormed away without engaging with him further, and when the matter turned to a discussion of Sancho Panza’s desire to govern an island, the duke surprised the pair by granting the squire a government over one of his islands. Sancho was moved beyond words and thanked them both deeply. The duchess then sought to discover the details about Dulcinea Del Toboso and rightly pointed out that Don Quixote had never laid eyes on her. Don Quixote explained how he had brought her forth from his fantasy, but that he had recently attempted to meet her only to be thwarted by the enchanters who have chosen to vex him. He explains that his vision is never affected by the enchanters and so they must have sought to harm him by targeting his beloved.
The dinner ends with a protracted ceremony of beard washing that the maidservants enact to have their fun with the knight errant, and the duchess invites Sancho to an audience with her ladies. Sancho gladly complies and confesses that he believes his master is afflicted with madness though he is at most times a most generous and intelligent man. Sancho has in the past chosen to take advantage of this fact by feeding him the story of lady Dulcinea threshing wheat during their first encounter, and then later convinced his master that the peasant girl on the road had been an enchanted Day Dulcinea. He also tells her of the adventure that Don Quixote had claimed to have in the depth of the cave of Montesino. The duchess convinces Sancho that the peasant girl had been Lady Dulcinea since she had been informed of the matter by their own personal enchanters. Sancho does not believe the lady is lying to him and departs believing her words to be true while she rushes to her husband to contrive a drama that would them both at the expense of Sancho and his master.
Don Quixote and Sancho are invited on a hunting trip with the royal couple. The hunting trip is successful as the hunters bring down a large boar while Sancho gets scared and becomes trapped in a tree. In the evening, the duke and duchess act as innocent spectators while Don Quixote and Sancho are entrapped by a ruse consisting of many spectacularly lit chariots and actors who pretend to be enchanters confronting Don Quixote along with the wizard Merlin. The wizard informs Don Quixote that the beautiful Dulcinea will remain enchanted until Sancho lashes himself three thousand times followed by an additional three hundred lashes on his naked buttocks. Understandably, Sancho refuses to be maltreated in this manner, and when Don Quixote threatens to complete the exercise by force the wizard informs them that it must be done with Sancho's assent. Alas, Sancho relents as the duke adds that Sancho could only ever receive the island if he agreed to be lashed. Don Quixote finds himself called to the aid of Countess Tifaldi, who is also called the Dolorous Duenna, as the duke receives one of her messengers.
Analysis
In this section of the book, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza encounter the enigmatic duke and duchess who have read and loved the first tale of Don Quixote's adventure. In this regard, these characters and the reader share the same perspective about the knight, but he has no understanding of the way he has been portrayed. This shared joke between the other characters and the readers heightens the confusion that surrounds sanity, insanity, truth, and lies. Furthermore, the plot of the novel is driven not by Don Quixote's imagination but rather that of the duchess, whose fascination with Don Quixote and her squire causes her to mobilize significant resources to create Don Quixote's imaginary world.
Cervantes explores the role of social class in Don Quixote, as his characters indicate that the worth of an individual is linked to their station in society. For instance, Sancho is admonished for verbally sparring with the duke and duchess but he freely insults the duenna without consequence. Similarly, Don Quixote argues with the priest without a second thought but he never contradicts anything the duchess or duke ever say to him. The royal couple is careful never to be overtly offensive to the knight and his squire, yet the reader soon begins to see their actions as rather cruel.
