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Don Quixote · Part Two

The Governorship of the Island

Appearance and RealityHonor and ReputationJustice and LawFreedom and Oppression

Section summary

The dukes make of Sancho's government the greatest of their jokes, and it is in it that the squire shows himself better than the master and than the very tricksters expected. He judges with good sense, refuses the money, goes hungry under the orders of a physician out of a comedy, and resigns of his own accord. Don Quixote, in the castle, gives Sancho the wisest counsel in the book, hears from Doña Rodríguez a plea for justice of the kind a Knight-Errant receives, and takes a beating in the dark.

Chapter XLII: Don Quixote's First Counsels

Honor and ReputationJustice and Law

Chapter summary

The Duke and Duchess, pleased with the success of the adventure of the Doleful Duenna, resolve to carry the jokes further, because they have in Sancho Panza a man so easygoing that he makes them pass for truth. Given the scheme and the orders that servants and vassals must keep in the government of the promised Insula, they command him to get ready for the day after Clavileño's flight, because his Insulans await him "like May water." Sancho came back from heaven with his enthusiasm cooled. From there he saw the earth so small that ruling over a mustard seed, among half a dozen men the size of hazelnuts, seems to him a little greatness, and he would accept a tiny bit of heaven, even half a league of it, before the largest insula in the world. The duke answers him that heaven is given only by God, that he gives him an insula "made and proper, round and well proportioned," and that whoever knows how to get along can win with the riches of the earth those of heaven. Sancho accepts, and says that it is not out of greed to leave his little houses, but out of desire to test what he knows he is worth as a governor. The duke assures him that, once he tastes it, he will eat his own hands for the government, so sweet a thing is it to command and be obeyed, and that Don Quixote, when he becomes emperor, which will undoubtedly happen, will not let him go by any means. Sancho concludes that it is good to command, "even if it is over a flock of cattle." His dress will be half that of a scholar and half that of a captain, since in the Insula arms are worth as much as letters. Sancho confesses that he has few letters and does not even know his ABCs, but that it is enough for him to keep the Christus of the primer in memory to be a good governor, and as for arms, he will handle whichever are given him, "until he falls, with God going before him."

Analysis

Don Quixote arrives, learns of the haste, asks the duke's leave, takes Sancho by the hand to his chamber, closes the door, and makes him sit down almost by force. He gives thanks to heaven that good fortune has come to the squire before it came to him, since he had kept the reward for his own good luck. He warns that Sancho, without rising early or staying up late, merely by the breath of Knight-Errantry, finds himself a governor, and that he should not attribute the favor to his merits but give thanks to heaven and then to the greatness of the profession. He will be his Cato, to guide him "to a safe harbor" on that stormy sea. First, fear God; then, know oneself, so as not to swell like the frog that wanted to equal the ox, and remember that you guarded pigs in the land. Sancho answers that it was when he was a boy, and that as a grown man he was already tending geese, and that this does not matter, since not all who govern come from the lineage of kings. Don Quixote agrees, and from this he draws what those of humble origin owe to office: a mild gentleness that frees them from malicious gossip, the grace of a humble lineage, and this rule:

Mira, Sancho: si tomas por medio a la virtud, y te precias de hacer hechos virtuosos, no hay para qué tener envidia a los que los tienen de príncipes y señores, porque la sangre se hereda y la virtud se aquista, y la virtud vale por sí sola lo que la sangre no vale, look, Sancho: if you take virtue as your means and pride yourself on performing virtuous deeds, there is no reason to envy those who have such deeds as princes and lords, because blood is inherited and virtue is acquired, and virtue alone is worth what blood is not worth.

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Chapter XLIII: The Second Counsels

Chapter summary

The narrator asks who, hearing the reasoning just given, would not take Don Quixote for a very sensible man of good intentions, and he recalls what the story has already said: the gentleman only flares up when chivalry is touched, and in his other speeches he shows a clear understanding, so much so that at every step his works discredit his judgment, and his judgment his works. In these second precepts, however, he "raised his discretion and his madness to a high point." Sancho Panza listens to him very attentively, so as to come through the "birth" of his government well.

Analysis

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Chapter XLIV: Sancho Departs; Altisidora Sings

LoveLanguage and Narration

Chapter summary

The chapter opens with a complaint said to come from the original itself: Cide Hamete Benengeli is said to have found the story he took in hand "dry and limited," always speaking of the gentleman and Sancho, and the interpreter did not translate it as he had written it. In the First Part, to escape the bind, the Moor used the device of novellas, the Curious Impertinent and the Captive, which were kept apart from the story. He feared, however, that the attention demanded by Don Quixote's feats might make readers pass through them in haste or boredom, without seeing the grace they contain. For that reason, in this Second Part, he wanted only episodes that seemed like novellas, born from the very events, and still limited to the words that suffice:

Analysis

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Chapter XLV: Taking Possession of the Insula and the First Judgments

Honor and ReputationJustice and Law

Chapter summary

The narrator calls upon the sun, the "eye of heaven," to light up the darkness of his wit as he narrates the government of the great Sancho Panza. With his whole retinue, Sancho arrives at a place of about a thousand neighbors, the best of the duke's, which they let him understand is called the Insula Barataria, either because the place was called Baratario or because of the "bargain" (the haggle) by which they gave him the government. The council goes out to receive him at the town gate, the bells ring, they lead him to the greater church to give thanks to God, and they hand him the keys "with some ridiculous ceremonies," admitting him as perpetual governor. The dress, the beard, the fatness, and the small size of the new governor astonish those who do not know the crux of the trick, and even those who do know it, who are many. They seat him in the tribunal's chair, and the duke's steward tells him that it is an ancient custom that the new governor answer an intricate question, by which the people take the measure of his wit and rejoice or grieve at his coming. Sancho looks at some large letters on the wall opposite and, since he cannot read, asks what they are. He is told that it is the day of his investiture, in the name of "Don Sancho Panza," and he answers:

Analysis

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Chapter XLVI: The Cats and the Cowbells

Chapter summary

Don Quixote does not sleep. The thoughts that Altisidora's music left him prick him like fleas, and along with them the stitches missing from his stockings. In the morning he dresses in chamois, puts on his traveling boots "to conceal the disgrace of his stockings," puts on his scarlet cloak and his green velvet montera, takes his rosary, and goes out, with much prosopopoeia, to the antechamber where the dukes await. In a gallery Altisidora and her friend lie in ambush, and Altisidora feigns a faint on seeing him. He says he knows what such fits proceed from. To her friend, who answers that the girl is the most sane in the house and will not come to her senses while he is there, he asks that a lute be put in her room. With it, he says, he will console the lamented damsel as best he can, "for in the beginnings of love, quick disillusionments are usually qualified remedies." When Altisidora comes to, she tells her companion that the lute must be brought, because he wants to give them music. The Duke and Duchess, once informed, agree on a prank "more laughing than harmful." That very day the duchess truly dispatches the page who had made the enchanted figure of Dulcinea in the forest to Teresa Panza, with Sancho's letter and the bundle of clothes, ordering him to bring back a good account of all that happens there.

Analysis

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Chapter XLVII: The Physician Pedro Recio and the Duke's Warning

Chapter summary

From the tribunal they take Sancho Panza to a sumptuous palace, where in a great hall there is a royal table, very clean, set for one alone. Shawms sound, four pages give him water for his hands, and he sits at the head. A man standing at his side, with a whalebone wand, who turns out to be the physician, touches with it each dish the butler places before the governor, and a page carries it off with great speed. Sancho asks whether the food is to be eaten like a game of sleight of hand. The physician answers that it is the custom of the insulas where there are governors, that he is paid to watch over the governor's health more than his own, and that he removes whatever he imagines might do harm: the fruit, for being too moist, and the other dish, for being hot and full of spices, which increase thirst. The roasted partridges, which Sancho asks for, he will not let him eat "as long as I have life":

Analysis

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Chapter XLVIII: Doña Rodríguez at Night

Chapter summary

Six days without going out in public, Don Quixote is sulky and melancholy, his face bandaged and "marked not by the hand of God but by the nails of a cat." One night, while keeping watch, he hears the door of his chamber being unlocked and imagines that Altisidora is coming to startle his honesty and bring him to the point of failing the faith owed to Dulcinea. He answers her in a voice that can be heard: not even the greatest beauty on earth will make him stop adoring the one engraved in the middle of his heart, whether she has been transformed into a "coarse peasant woman" or into a nymph of the Tagus, and whether Merlin or Montesinos has her wherever they like, "for wherever you are, you are mine, and wherever I am, I have been and shall be yours." He stands on the bed, wrapped in a yellow satin quilt, with a galosh on his head, and with his face and mustache bandaged, the face from the scratches and the mustache so that they would not faint: "the most extraordinary phantom that could be imagined." A most reverend duenna enters, in long white headdress that covers her from head to foot, with a half candle between her fingers and large spectacles. The gentleman, seeing the dress and the silence, takes her for a witch and crosses himself quickly. She, seeing so tall and yellow a figure, screams, drops the candle, and in the dark stumbles over her skirts and falls. He conjures her to say whether she is a soul in torment, and she answers that she is Doña Rodríguez, duenna of honor to the duchess, who comes "with a need of the kind your grace usually relieves." He asks whether she has come to arrange some go-between's business, which serves no one, "by the grace of the peerless beauty of my lady Dulcinea," and she goes out to light the candle.

Analysis

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Chapter XLIX: The Governor's Night Rounds

Honor and ReputationJustice and Law

Chapter summary

Sancho Panza, disgusted with the painter-farmer, tells those present that judges and governors must be made of bronze so as not to feel the importunity of those who do business at every hour. If the poor judge does not listen to them, he says, soon they murmur about his bones and "pick apart their lineages." Judges are of flesh and bone, and give nature what it asks, "or else, if not I, who do not feed my own." Those who know him marvel at hearing him speak with such elegance, and they attribute to the office the virtue of fertilizing or numbing the understanding. Doctor Recio promises to give him supper that night, even if it exceeds the aphorisms of Hippocrates, and the governor suppers on beef with onion and some veal feet "somewhat advanced in days," with more relish than if they had given him Milanese francolins or Roman pheasants. He then tells the doctor not to worry about delicate dishes, for his stomach is used to goat, cow, bacon, cured meat, turnips, and onions. He asks that the steward bring him the olla podrida, and says he will govern the Insula "without forgiving right or taking bribes," for "the devil is in Cantillana." He wants to clean the Insula of vagrants and idlers, who in the commonwealth are what drones are in the hive. He wants to favor the farmers, keep the privileges of the gentlemen, reward the virtuous, and respect religion. The steward, amazed that a man without letters should utter so many sentences and warnings, so far from what those who sent him expected:

Analysis

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Chapter L: The Executioners and Teresa's Letter

Chapter summary

The Moor declares who the enchanters were. Another duenna, who slept with Doña Rodríguez, had felt her leave and, since all duennas are friends of knowing, understanding, and sniffing things out, followed her in silence and went to tell the duchess. The duchess asked the duke's leave and went with Altisidora to the door of Don Quixote's chamber. When she heard that Doña Rodríguez had put out "the Aranjuez" of her fountains, she could hold back neither one of them. Full of anger and eager for vengeance, they burst in and did what has been told, because, the narrator says, "the affronts that strike directly at the beauty and presumption of women" stir in them anger and the desire for revenge. The Duke and Duchess laugh at the affair, and the duchess, "persisting in her intention of playing jokes and getting entertainment from Don Quixote," dispatches the page who had made the figure of Dulcinea to Teresa Panza, with the letter from her husband, another letter of her own, and a large necklace of coral.

Analysis

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Chapter LI: The Bridge, the Letters, and the Ordinances

Justice and Law

Chapter summary

On the day after the round, the steward spends the night awake, thinking about the disguised girl, and the majordomo writes to the dukes what Sancho Panza does and says, "as amazed at his deeds as at his words," because in him are mingled discreet outbursts and foolish ones. On the orders of Doctor Recio, Sancho breaks his fast with a little preserve and four sips of cold water, which he would trade for a piece of bread and a bunch of grapes. The doctor makes him believe that few and delicate dishes sharpen the wit, which suits one who commands, and with that sophism Sancho suffers hunger and, in secret, curses the government and whoever gave it to him. With hunger and the preserve in him, he goes to judge, and the first case is a question from a stranger, for which he asks for attention, because it is of importance and "somewhat difficult." A river divided two estates of the same lordship. Over it there was a bridge, and at its end a gallows and a courthouse, with four judges who judged under the law set by the lord of the river:

Analysis

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Chapter LII: The Second Doña Angustiada

Honor and ReputationJustice and Law

Chapter summary

Cured of his scratches, Don Quixote thinks the life he leads in the castle is against all the order of chivalry, and he decides to ask the dukes' leave to go to Zaragoza, whose festivities are approaching, where he thinks to win the armor that is awarded in them. At table with the Duke and Duchess, he begins to ask for leave when two women dressed in mourning enter. One of them throws herself at his feet, face down, with her mouth against his feet, in such sad moans that they confuse whoever hears them. Don Quixote lifts her, has her uncover her face, and sees Doña Rodríguez. The other in mourning is the deceived daughter. The dukes, who had taken Doña Rodríguez for a fool and of good stock, but not so much so as to do foolish things, grant her leave to speak alone with the knight. She reminds him of his promise and asks him, before he escapes along those roads:

Analysis

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Chapter LIII: The End of the Governorship

Freedom and Oppression

Chapter summary

The chapter opens with a reflection by Cide Hamete, the "Mohammedan philosopher": to think that the things of this life can last forever in one state is to think in vain, for the seasons turn in a circle, spring, summer, high summer, autumn, winter, and time repeats itself:

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Reading of the Part

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