Don Quixote Part 1, Chapter 25 - 36
Don Quixote lifts his order for Sancho’s silence, and the squire questions the knight as to why he had sought to contravene the maddened Cardenio regarding the matter of the 'queen'. Don Quixote defends the queen from the chivalry stories and informs Sancho that he has struck an idea about building his renown as a knight. He wishes to imitate the legendary knights Amadis and Orlando by performing a penance. He believes that he has enough motivation to do so given his unanswered love for Lady Dulcinea, and charges Sancho to carry from him a letter to the lady. The night before Sancho is set to leave, one of the convicts that Don Quixote had freed, saw them lying down for the night and stole the ass that carried Sancho. The squire lamented the loss of the animal quite severely and only calmed down when Don Quixote promised to write him a warrant that allowed him to secure three of the mules that Don Quixote owned. Sancho then departed after he had learned of the true identity of Dulcinea, knowing that she is the daughter of a farmer from a nearby village whose real name is Aldonza de Lorenzo.
Don Quixote decides that he will not behave violently like the knight Orlando but rather like the morose Amadis, while Sancho soon realizes that he had forgotten to take both the letter and the warrant for the mules from his master. He is discovered by the priest and barber from Don Quixote’s village, who recognize both Sancho and Rocinante. They cajole him into telling them of Don Quixote’s condition as well as the mission that Don Quixote had sent the squire on. They decide to have Sancho lead them back to Don Quixote, who they hope to dupe with the garb of a damsel in distress to return him to the village. They begin to believe that Don Quixote’s madness has caused Sancho to lose his mind given his belief that his master will one day become the emperor or the archbishop. Sancho leads them to the ravines and asks them to wait while he goes ahead to find Don Quixote to feed him the lie that the priest had contrived. He had suggested that Sancho tell his master that he already met the lady Dulcinea who had asked him to bring Don Quixote back to the village forthwith. As they wait for Sancho to escort Don Quixote to them, they happen upon the lamenting Cardenio, whose tale they had already learned from Sancho.
The priest tries to comfort the young man, and Cardenio continues the rest of his tale to them. He informs them that the hateful Don Fernando had coveted the beauty of Luscinda and so had sent Cardenio away on some false plan to approach her father for her hand in marriage. Luscinda’s father thought of the duke’s son as a better match and had readily agreed to the marriage without Lucinda’s consent who had then sent a letter to Cardenio telling him of Don Fernando’s betrayal. Cardenio had rushed to the city and encountered Luscinda marrying Don Fernando. He believed that Luscinda had betrayed him, and married Don Fernando for his better wealth. He left behind a letter accusing her of betrayal and departed to sequester himself in the wild until death find him.
Their tale is interrupted by the voice of another soul lamenting its fate and the group discovers that it is that of a woman who is pretending to be a boy. The priest approaches her with the barber and Cardenio. She reveals to them that she, Dorotea, was the daughter of a rich tenant of the Duke whose son, Duke Fernando, had become obsessed with her. He had stolen into her room and seized her in his arms to exercise his lust but she had managed to extract from him a vow of marriage to retain her honor. The foul man had then deserted her, and she had learned that the wretch had married another woman called Luscinda. She had gone with a servant to that town to confront Don Fernando and learned that Luscinda had fainted on her marriage and left a note that she would kill herself before being Don Fernando’s wife for she had been married to Cardenio in spirit. Dorotea had learned that this Cardenio had left all behind believing that he had been cheated, and this had caused Luscinda to disappear as well. Finally, Dorotea was forced to hide in the mountains as the servant to a goatherd because her family had believed that she had eloped with the servant. This servant had then betrayed her and attempted to force himself on her but alas she managed to escape to her present abode.
Cardenio chose to reveal himself to the woeful Dorotea and suggested that they act together since their fates were so intertwined by the actions of Don Fernando. The pair of them agree to aid the priest in his scheme to retrieve Don Quixote from his penance. Dorotea chooses to play the part of a high lady seeking aid and entreats Don Quixote in the fashion appropriate to all damsels in distress from the chivalry books that the knight errant so adored. She gained from him a promise that he would aid her and would not participate in any other quest until her predicament had been resolved. Dorotea then constructed a compelling fictitious history in which she played the role of a princess who has been forced to abandon her kingdom in exile from fear of a hateful giant that is prophesied to be defeated by a just knight, fitting the description of Don Quixote. It does not take long for both Sancho and Don Quixote to begin dreaming of becoming Emperors and governors after restoring the princess to her kingdom. Don Quixote takes Sancho Panza aside and begins to ask him about his interactions with lady Dulcinea, who he had claimed had called Don Quixote to her side with all haste. Sancho Panza propagates the lie he had told and embellishes it with details, but attempts to convince his master that his focus should be on gaining the kingdom of Micomicona through the princess. Don Quixote agrees that it is important for him to vanquish the enemies of the princess but yet his heart longed to be at the side of Dulcinea.
They then encounter Fernandes, the servant that Don Quixote had attempted to rescue from cruelty as he had been returning home after his first sally. Fernandes causes the knight a lot of embarrassment as he tells them all how much worse his predicament had been made by Don Quixote’s intervention. The others in the company stifle their laughs, but the knight is affected by the man’s words. He retires to a bed just as soon as they arrive at the inn where Sancho Panza had borne such a terrible ordeal, as he recalled it. The innkeeper shares with the company the several books on chivalry he possesses when he hears the priest criticizing the books for Don Quixote’s condition. The priest discovers a small story, The Tale of Inappropriate Curiosity, among the books and begins reading it for the entertainment of the others. The tale begins with the account of a deep friendship between two gentlemen, Anselmo and Lotario. Their bond was so deep that Anselmo trusted his friend Lotario in securing the hand of the beautiful and virtuous Carmilla in marriage. However, Anselmo was wracked by curiosity and despite having a happy marriage with Carmilla he decided to test her fidelity by entreating Lotario to secretly woo her. Lotario was very reluctant and attempted to pretend the courtship but finally agreed after Anselmso’s ever-increasing insistence. He was overcome with Carmilla’s virtue and eventually felt truly in love with her, while she had at first attempted to shield herself from him but eventually gave in due to the numerous opportunities that Anselmo himself provided his friend.
Carmilla’s maid, Leonela, assisted her in keeping her affair with Lotario a secret but used it as an opportunity to take a secret lover for herself as well. Lotario once saw this secret lover of the maid and thought that Carmilla was betraying him much like she had betrayed Anselmo. He went to Anselmo and claimed that he should come to see for himself how his wife behaved in his absence. Lotario regrets his doubt of Carmilla later when she tells him of how the maidservant has become insolent in carrying on an affair with a secret lover and informs her of the confession that he had made to her husband. They decide that they would dupe the man, and Carmilla leads the other two in manufacturing a drama which leads him to believe that both Carmilla and Lotario are loyal to him. Sancho Panza interrupts the tale as he informs them that Don Quixote is fighting the giant who is the bane of the kingdom of Micomicona, for he had seen a huge decapitated head with gushing blood. The others find that Don Quixote is fighting a giant in his dream, and in his imagined fight, he has unleashed his slashes on several wineskins. They bring Don Quixote back to bed with some difficulty while Sancho continues to believe that his master has killed the giant and so he is certain to receive his landed title very soon. The innkeeper is particularly upset at the loss of his property at the hands of Don Quixote, and he only calms down when the priest assures him that they would be certain to give him all that he desired.
The priest then concludes the story of Anselmo and Lotario as Anselmo discovers the maidservant having an affair with a man, and forces her to disclose all the secrets she holds. The maid begs that she be allowed to answer his questions in the morning, and Carmilla begins to fear that the maid will undo her secret as well. Carmilla takes all her money and goes to Lotario, who believes her and they escape from the city. Carmilla remains in a convent, while Loratio travels onwards, and even the maid attempts to escape but she is caught by the city guards and deposited to the governor who extracts all her secrets. Anselmo wakes up to find himself deserted of all, and learns of the maid’s account from a rider outside the city. Anselmo, Lotario, and Carmilla all suffer a quick death, without ever meeting any of the others. Just as the tale is being concluded, a mysterious group enters the inn. All the members have their faces covered, and consist of four men along with a singular sighing female. The lady’s mask falls and it reveals Luscinda who is being escorted by Don Fernando at the head of his guards. Don Fernando had found Lucinda at a convent and had stolen her from it in secret. Dorotea entreats Don Fernando with such fervor that all the people in the inn are reduced to tears for her purity of desire. Don Fernando apologizes to Dorotea for his betrayal and hugs her to him as Cardenio and Lucinda reunite in each other’s arms. Sancho Panza sheds just as many tears as the others but later claims that they had been shed at the account of discovering that he would no longer lay claim to an earldom given Dorotea’s true identity.
Analysis
The priest and barber are depicted as sane characters that make it their responsibility to either protect or cure the maddened Don Quixote. It is Don Quixote's refusal to end his madness that leads the other characters to pretend that his imagined world is real. His insanity is unique in that he perceives the real world through the lens of imaginative idealism, where prostitutes are high-born ladies and common innkeepers are Castellans. Sancho's insanity is quite different, in that he can tread that line that separates the worlds of both Don Quixote and the sane characters such as the barber and the priest. In much of this chapter, Sancho Panza acts as the conduit between these two worlds for characters that interact with Don Quixote. He is crazy enough to believe that his master will one day bestow him with an island government but sane enough to convincingly lie to his master about his meeting with lady Dulcinea.
It is also interesting to observe that the priest and the barber do not express any intention of aiding Sancho to overcome his madness when they realize its presence. It can be argued that his madness is amusing, and so they do not consider it to require remedy. Sancho Panza views his master as the reader, and unlike the other characters in the novel, Sancho Panza understands the honorable intent with which his master acts while the other characters mostly just witness the dishonorable results.
The priest and barber fail to realize that they do not need to have Dorotea pretend to be anything other than herself since Don Quixote wishes to aid damsels like her. In such a light, it can be argued that Dorotea is pretending to be herself since her true origins and the fictitious ones are those of a damsel in distress. Her contrived history is wonderfully similar to her actual history since Don Fernando's theft of her virginity is represented in the form of a giant stealing her kingdom.
