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Don Quixote · Part Two

The Duke and Duchess and Clavileño

Appearance and RealityLanguage and NarrationHonor and ReputationMadness

Section summary

The dukes read the First Part, and it is this reading that decides what happens in the castle: they know what to expect from the gentleman and from Sancho, and they arrange, one by one, the adventures that the books taught them to admire. In this stretch Don Quixote answers the cleric who despises him, Sancho confesses to the duchess that he invented Dulcinea's enchantment and hears from her that the one deceived was he, and the dukes' farce (Merlin, the Doleful Duenna, the wooden horse) compels the squire to flog himself for a lie that was his own. The block closes with the flight that never left the garden and with the pact between two men who ask each other to believe in what neither has seen.

Chapter XXXII: The Reply to the Churchman

Honor and Reputation

Chapter summary

Don Quixote rises from the table of the duke and duchess, trembling from head to foot "like a man possessed by quicksilver," and answers the ecclesiastic who sent him home to look after his wife and children. He begins with the rules of the encounter: the place, the presence of the dukes, and the respect owed to the cleric's rank tie his hands from righteous anger, and since the weapons of the robed are the same as women's, the tongue, it is with the tongue that he enters an equal battle. He complains that from one who ought to give good counsel he received infamous insults, because public and harsh reproof goes beyond the limits of good reproof, which sits better with gentleness, and because no one should call a sinner a madman and a fool without knowing the sin. He asks what madness condemns him, and with what right someone raised in the narrowness of some ward, who has seen no more of the world than twenty or thirty leagues of his district, comes rashly to make laws for chivalry and to judge knights-errant. It is at this point that he answers the scorn of the learned:

Analysis

Si me tuvieran por tonto los caballeros, los magníficos, los generosos, los altamente nacidos, tuviéralo por afrenta inreparable; pero de que me tengan por sandio los estudiantes, que nunca entraron ni pisaron las sendas de la caballería, no se me da un ardite: caballero soy y caballero he de morir si place al Altísimo, if knights, the magnificent, the generous, and the highborn held me for a fool, I would take it as an irreparable affront; but that students, who never entered or trod the paths of chivalry, hold me for a dunce, I do not care a farthing: a knight I am, and a knight I must die, if it pleases the Most High.

The argument shifts ground from what he said to the canon in the First Part: there he defended chivalry for what it had made of him; here he denies the judge the competence to judge it, because whoever never trod its path has no means of measuring it. Two readings: the sound defense of someone who sees the cleric speak of a thing he has not lived; or the exit of someone cornered, who disqualifies the accuser instead of answering the accusation.

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Chapter XXXIII: Sancho Before the Duchess

Madness

Chapter summary

Sancho Panza does not take his siesta, and goes, to keep his word, to see the duchess, who has him sit in a low chair beside her. Out of sheer good breeding he does not want to, but she orders him to sit as a governor and speak as a squire, since for both things he deserves the same bench as the Cid Ruy Díaz the Campeador. The damsels and the duennas surround them in great silence, and the duchess, "now that we are alone," declares the doubts the printed history has left her. The first is how good Sancho, who never saw Dulcinea nor carried the letter, forgotten in the memorandum book in the Sierra Morena, dared to feign the answer, and that business of having found her sifting wheat, all trickery and lies, to the detriment of the good reputation of the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso, and all of it "that does not agree with the quality and fidelity of good squires." Sancho rises without answering, with quiet steps, his body stooped and his finger to his lips, and walks around the room lifting the canopies. Only afterward, seated again, does he say that now, having looked over those present, he will answer without fear:

Analysis

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Chapter XXXIV: The Hunt and the Messenger Devil

Chapter summary

The duke and duchess enjoy the conversation of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza so much that they confirm their intention to play tricks on them that have the air and appearance of adventures, and they take as their pretext what the gentleman told of Montesinos's cave, to stage one that will be famous. What most astonishes the duchess is Sancho's simplicity, for he came to believe, as an infallible truth, that Dulcinea del Toboso is enchanted, when he himself was the enchanter and the trickster of the affair. Once the order is given to the servants, six days later they take the gentleman to a hunt, with as much apparatus of huntsmen and beaters as would be taken for a crowned king. They give Don Quixote a hunting outfit and Sancho another, of very fine green cloth. The gentleman refuses his, saying that another day he must return to the hard exercise of arms and cannot carry wardrobes or pantries with him, and Sancho accepts his with the intention of selling it at the first opportunity. On the day, Don Quixote arms himself, Sancho dresses and goes, mounted on his donkey, which he would not leave even for a horse. The gentleman, out of pure courtesy and deference, takes the reins of the duchess's palfrey, though the duke did not wish to consent, and they reach a wood between two very high mountains, where the posts are divided with great din, shouting, and clamor.

Analysis

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Chapter XXXV: Merlin and the Three Thousand Lashes

Chapter summary

To the rhythm of the pleasant music, a cart of those called triumphal arrives, drawn by six gray mules covered in white linen, each with a "disciplinant of light" dressed in white and a large wax torch lit, and on the cart, twelve other disciplinants, white as snow, all with their torches. On a high throne sits a nymph dressed in a thousand veils of silver cloth, with leaves of silver foil and gold, which made her, if not rich, at least showily dressed, her face covered by a transparent veil that reveals a most beautiful maiden's face, of seventeen to twenty years. Beside her is a figure in long robes and a black veil. When the cart comes face to face with the duke and duchess and Don Quixote, the music stops, the figure rises, pulls away her robes and removes the veil, and reveals herself to be the very figure of Death, fleshless and ugly, at which the gentleman feels grief, Sancho Panza fear, and the dukes some start. This living death, with a somewhat drowsy voice and a barely awakened tongue, says in verse that she is Merlin, he whom the stories say had the devil for a father, "the authorized lie of the ages," prince of Magic and repository of Zoroastrian science, who has great affection for the wandering knights and who, having heard from the depths of the caves of Dis the doleful voice of the beautiful and peerless Dulcinea del Toboso, learned of her enchantment and of her transformation into a rustic villager, took pity, and after turning over a hundred thousand books of his science, has come to bring the remedy. She addresses Don Quixote, "glory and honor of those who wear tunics of steel and diamond," and pronounces the sentence:

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Chapter XXXVI: Sancho's Letter and the Doleful Duenna

Madness

Chapter summary

The duke has a steward of very burlesque and jovial wit, and it is he who made the figure of Merlin, arranged the apparatus of the past adventure, composed the verses, and had a page play Dulcinea. Now, with the lords' approval, he orders another, of a more graceful and strange contrivance. The next day the duke and duchess ask Sancho Panza whether he has begun the penance for the disenchantment of Dulcinea del Toboso, and he says yes, that the night before he gave himself five lashes with his hand. The duchess replies that this is slapping, not whipping, and that the wise Merlin will not be satisfied with such gentleness: a scourge of thorns will be needed, or of cords that can be felt, because "the letter enters with blood," and the freedom of so great a lady is not bought at so low a price, and works of charity done lukewarmly and feebly have no merit and are worth nothing. Sancho asks for a suitable scourge, provided it does not hurt too much, because, though rustic, his flesh is more cotton than esparto, and it is not right that he be discredited for the benefit of others. She promises him one that will strike with great precision, with the tenderness of her own flesh, as if they were her own sisters.

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Chapter XXXVII: The Duennas and the Squires

Chapter summary

The duke and duchess rejoice greatly to see how well Don Quixote responds to what they had in mind, and it is then that Sancho Panza says that he did not want this lady duenna to put any stumbling block in the way of the promise of his government, because he heard from a Toledan apothecary, who spoke like a goldfinch, that wherever duennas intervene nothing good can happen. If all duennas are tedious and impertinent, what will the doleful ones be, like the countess "Three Skirts, or Three Tails"? For in his land skirts and tails, tails and skirts, it is all one. The gentleman bids him be silent: if this lady comes from such distant lands to seek him, she cannot be of the apothecary's kind, and as she is a countess she will serve, if she serves at all, only queens and empresses, who in their houses are most gracefully served by other duennas. Doña Rodríguez, who was present, replies that the duchess has duennas in her service who could be countesses if fortune wished, but "where the laws are made, kings go," and no one should speak ill of duennas, especially the old and maiden ones; for although she is not a maiden, she well understands the advantage a maiden duenna has over a widowed one, and whoever clipped them is left with the scissors in hand. Sancho replies that there is so much to clip in duennas, according to his barber, that it is better not to stir the rice, even if it sticks, and Doña Rodríguez returns the accusation to his class:

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Chapter XXXVIII: The Story of the Doleful Duenna

Chapter summary

Behind the mournful musicians, as many as twelve duennas enter the garden in two rows, all in long mourning robes, apparently of trodden serge, with white caps of fine hemp so long that only the border of the robe is visible. Then comes the countess Trifaldi, led by the hand by Trifaldin of the White Beard, dressed in very fine black bay cloth, and her train or skirt has three points, held up by three pages also in mourning, which makes a "mathematical figure" of three acute angles. Everyone concludes that she should therefore be called the countess Trifaldi, and the narrator says:

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Chapter XXXIX: The Sentence of Malambruno

Chapter summary

Everything Sancho Panza says amuses the dukes as much as it exasperates Don Quixote, who orders him to be silent, and the Doleful Duenna goes on. After many questions and answers, since the infanta always kept to her thirteen and never varied from her first declaration, the vicar ruled in favor of Don Clavijo and gave him Antonomasia as his lawful wife, with so much vexation to Queen Maguncia, the infanta's mother, that within three days they buried her. "She must have died, without a doubt," says Sancho, and Trifaldin retorts that in Candaya people are not buried alive, only dead. Sancho, who has already seen a man in a faint buried, believing him dead, thinks the queen ought to have fainted before dying, for with life many things can be remedied. And he thinks the infanta's folly was not so great, for if she had married a page of her own the harm would have been beyond remedy, but to marry a knight so gallant and learned, though a foolishness, was not as great as it is thought, "for, according to the rules of my lord, who is present and will not let me lie:"

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Chapter XL: The Wooden Horse

Chapter summary

The chapter opens with the narrator's thanks to Cide Hamete Benengeli, first author of the history, for recounting even its smallest details, painting its thoughts, uncovering its imaginings, answering its unspoken questions, clarifying its doubts and resolving its arguments, and it closes with a cheer for Don Quixote, Dulcinea, and Sancho Panza. Then Sancho Panza, seeing the Doleful Duenna in a faint, swears that he never heard nor saw, nor did his master ever tell, an adventure like this, and wonders why the giant did not find another punishment than shaving them: it would be better to cut off half their noses, from the middle up, even though they would then speak through the nose. He bets they have no money to pay whoever would shave them. One of the twelve answers that it is true, that some have taken the economical remedy of applying sticky plasters to the face and tearing them off at once, remaining as smooth as the bottom of a mortar; and that in Candaya there are women who go from house to house pulling out hairs and polishing eyebrows, but the ladies' duennas never wanted to admit them, because most of them have the smell of procuresses, and if Don Quixote does not remedy them, beards will take them to the grave. Don Quixote says that he would pluck his own in Moorish land if he did not remedy theirs. The Trifaldi, who heard the clink of the promise in the midst of her swoon, comes to herself and asks that the promise be turned into deeds.

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Chapter XLI: The Flight of Clavileño

Appearance and Reality

Chapter summary

Night comes, and with it the hour set for the horse, whose delay wearies Don Quixote, who already thinks Malambruno is slow to send it, either because he is not the knight for whom the adventure was reserved, or because the giant does not dare to come with him to single combat. Suddenly four savages dressed in green ivy enter the garden, carrying on their shoulders a large wooden horse, and one of them says that whoever has the courage should mount that contraption, and that the squire, if he has one, should take the croup. It is enough to turn the peg the horse carries on its neck, and they will cover their eyes, so that the height of the road does not cause dizziness, until the horse neighs. Sancho Panza says at once that he will not mount, because he has neither the courage nor is he a knight. The Doleful Duenna, seeing the horse, almost in tears, says that Malambruno's promises were certain, and that each of them, with each hair of the beard, begs the gentleman to shave and beat them. He, without taking a cushion or putting on spurs, says he will go most willingly, out of the desire he has to see all the duennas smooth. Sancho does not: if the shaving cannot be done without his mounting the croup, let the master look for another squire and the ladies another way to smooth their faces, for he is no wizard to enjoy wandering through the air. What will his islanders say when they learn that the governor goes strolling in the winds? With three thousand and some leagues to Candaya, if the horse tires or the giant grows weary, they will take half a dozen years to return, and there will no longer be an island or islanders in the world who know him. And since it is said that danger lies in delay, let them forgive him the beards of those ladies, "for St. Peter is well enough off in Rome." The dukes interrupt him:

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Reading of the Part

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