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Don Quixote · Part Two

Ricote, Roque, and Barcelona

Appearance and RealityLanguage and NarrationJustice and LawFreedom and Oppression

Section summary

On the return from the government, Sancho Panza meets on the road his neighbor Ricote, a Morisco expelled from Spain and disguised as a pilgrim. From there the volume takes the course of Barcelona, passing through the undone duel with Tosilos, the farewell of the dukes, and the praise of freedom. At an inn, Don Quixote hears for the first time, within the book, the false Quixote of Avellaneda, and changes course to refute him. The bandit Roque Guinart receives him among thieves who share out their loot with rigor, and Barcelona acclaims him as the true one, down to the print shop, where the rival book is being set in type.

Chapter LIV: Ricote on the Road

Freedom and Oppression

Chapter summary

The Duke and Duchess resolve that Don Quixote's challenge to their vassal shall go forward. The young man who had promised marriage to Doña Rodríguez's daughter fled to Flanders, so as not to have the duenna as a mother-in-law, and so they put in his place a Gascon lackey named Tosilos, instructed beforehand in everything he must do. Two days later the duke informs the gentleman that in four days the adversary will present himself in the field, armed as a knight, and will maintain that the damsel lies by half her beard, and even by her whole beard, if they affirm that he gave her his word of marriage. Don Quixote rejoices, promises himself to perform marvels, and counts the days with such eagerness that the four seem to him four hundred centuries. The narrator lets them pass and goes to meet Sancho Panza, who returns mounted on the gray ass in search of his master, whose company pleases him more than governing all the insulas in the world. The text says the narrator never ascertained whether what Sancho governed was an insula, a city, a town, or a place.

Analysis

Shortly beyond the Insula, six foreign pilgrims with their staves, the kind who beg for alms by singing, surround him in a line and chant in a language he does not understand, except for the word "alms." Sancho, who according to Cide Hamete Benengeli was charitable beyond the ordinary, gives them half a loaf and half a cheese and explains by signs that he has no more. They ask for "guelte" (money, in German), and he, putting his thumb to his throat and his hand up high, shows that he hasn't a penny. As he passes, one of them embraces him and calls him by name in plain Castilian. It is Ricote, the Morisco, a former neighbor and shopkeeper of the village, unrecognizable in that dress. Sancho asks him how he dares to return to a Spain where, if he is caught, he will meet with bad luck, and the other answers that no one will recognize him if Sancho does not denounce him. They go with the companions to a poplar off the royal road, and the pilgrims, young men of good appearance, set up the banquet: bread, salt, nuts, cheese, ham bones, caviar, dried olives, and six wineskins, one for each, Ricote's as big as the five. Sancho, following the proverb of one who goes to Rome, raises his as the others do, and amid toasts of "Spanish and German, all one," he forgets the government. When the wine runs out, sleep overcomes them all except Ricote and Sancho, who ate more and drank less. They sit at the foot of a beech, and Ricote tells, in pure Castilian, what happened to him after the expulsion. His Majesty's decree terrified him, and he decided to leave alone, before the haste seized the others, to find a place to lodge his family. He says he saw, as the older men saw, that the proclamations were laws and not threats, and that the reason for believing so was knowing the bad intentions of his own people:

me parece que fue inspiración divina la que movió a Su Majestad a poner en efecto tan gallarda resolución, no porque todos fuésemos culpados, que algunos había cristianos firmes y verdaderos; pero eran tan pocos que no se podían oponer a los que no lo eran, y no era bien criar la sierpe en el seno, teniendo los enemigos dentro de casa. Finalmente, con justa razón fuimos castigados con la pena del destierro, blanda y suave al parecer de algunos, pero al nuestro, la más terrible que se nos podía dar, it seems to me that it was divine inspiration that moved His Majesty to put into effect so gallant a resolution, not because all of us were guilty, for there were some firm and true Christians, but they were so few that they could not oppose those who were not, and it was not well to nurse the serpent in one's bosom, with enemies inside one's house. Finally, with good reason we were punished with the penalty of exile, mild and gentle in the opinion of some, but to ours the most terrible that could be given us.

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Chapter LV: Sancho in the Ditch

Chapter summary

The delay with Ricote keeps Sancho Panza from reaching the castle that day. Half a league from it, night overtakes him, and since it is summer he leaves the road to wait for morning. Looking for a place to settle, he falls with the gray ass into a deep and very dark pit, among very ancient buildings, and as he falls he commends himself to God with all his heart, believing he will not stop until the bottom of the abysses. The gray ass hits bottom a little more than three man-heights below, and he finds himself on top of the animal without any wound. He feels his whole body, and, seeing himself "good, whole, and Catholic in health," he gives thanks without tiring of it. The walls are smooth, with nothing to grip, and the gray ass complains tenderly and painfully. Then Sancho laments aloud:

Analysis

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Chapter LVI: The Duel with Tosilos

Freedom and Oppression

Chapter summary

The Duke and Duchess do not repent of the trick of the government. That same day the steward tells them, almost word for word, what Sancho Panza said and did in Barataria, and he magnifies the assault on the Insula and the squire's fear. Then comes the day of the appointed battle. The duke instructs the lackey Tosilos several times on how to vanquish Don Quixote without killing or wounding him, and he orders the iron tips removed from the lances. He argues before the gentleman that the Christianity he prides himself on does not permit such risk to lives, and that he gives free ground in his lands, although the duel goes against the decree of the Holy Council, which prohibits challenges. Don Quixote answers that His Excellency may dispose as he wishes. Before the castle a scaffold is raised for the judges of the field and for the duennas, mother and daughter, the petitioners, and people come from all the surrounding villages. The master of ceremonies goes round the field to see that there is no deceit. The duennas sit covered in mantles up to their eyes. Tosilos appears on a powerful Frisian horse of dappled gray, with strong and shining armor, an arroba of wool hanging from each of its feet, and his visor closed. The arrangement is that, if Don Quixote wins, the adversary marries the daughter of Doña Rodríguez, and if he is defeated, the other is free of his word, with no further satisfaction. Drums and trumpets sound, and the gentleman, commending himself to God and to the lady Dulcinea, awaits the signal. But the lackey, passing before the duennas, stops to look at the one who asks him for a husband, and finds her the most beautiful he has ever seen in his whole life. Love, who "is invisible, and enters and leaves wherever he likes, without anyone asking him to account for his deeds," shoots him through the heart with an arrow of two yards. When the signal is given, he is rapt and does not heed the trumpet.

Don Quixote charges with Rocinante. Sancho shouts that God give him the victory, "for you carry reason on your side," and Tosilos does not leave his place. Instead of fighting, he calls the field master and asks whether the battle is fought to see whether he marries that lady or not. Hearing that it is, he declares that he is fearful for his conscience, that he gives himself up as defeated, and that he wants to marry at once. Even the field master, who knew of the plan, is left without an answer. The duke, not knowing the cause, is left suspended and choleric. Tosilos goes to Doña Rodríguez and says that he wants to marry the daughter, and that he does not want to obtain by lawsuits what he can obtain by peace and without danger of death.

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Chapter LVII: The Farewell of the Duke and Duchess

Chapter summary

Don Quixote decides it is time to leave such idleness: he imagines that he is greatly missed by the world while he stays shut up and lazy among the comforts those lords give him as a knight-errant, and that he will have to account to heaven for this confinement. He asks the dukes for leave, and they grant it with signs of regret. The duchess gives Sancho Panza the letters from his wife, Teresa Panza, and he weeps as he reads them, thinking of how great the hopes that the news of the government had put in Teresa's heart were, and how all of them came to nothing once he returned to his master's exhausting adventures. He is consoled, however, by the acorns she sent to the duchess, which cannot even be called a bribe, because he already had the government when she sent them, and because those who receive favors must show gratitude. And he repeats to himself the reckoning he made before the dukes: he entered the government naked and leaves it naked, and he can say with a clear conscience: "Naked I was born, naked I find myself: I neither lose nor gain." Don Quixote does not yet know one detail: the duke's steward, the same one who played the Trifaldi, gave Sancho a purse with two hundred gold crowns for the expenses of the road.

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Chapter LVIII: Freedom, Saints, and Arcadia

Freedom and Oppression

Chapter summary

In the open plain, free of the courtship of Altisidora, Don Quixote feels at home, and his spirits are renewed for the subject of chivalry. He turns to Sancho Panza and speaks of liberty, apropos of the castle they have left:

Analysis

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Chapter LIX: The Inn and the Apocryphal Quixote

Language and Narration

Chapter summary

After the bulls, a clean spring among fresh trees welcomes Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, who unsaddle the gray ass and Rocinante and sit at the water's edge. The knight does not eat, out of pure sorrow; Sancho, who expected his master to make the salute, seeing that he does not remember to bring bread to his mouth, forgets his manners and begins to stuff down what he has. Don Quixote tells him to eat, since his life matters more to him than to the knight, and to let him die at the hands of his thoughts: he was born to live dying, and Sancho to die eating. He considers himself printed in histories, famous in arms, respected by princes, sought after by maidens, and when he expected applause and crowns he found himself in the morning trampled and kicked by filthy animals; he wants to let himself die of hunger, "the cruelest of deaths." Sancho replies with the proverb that whoever dies, dies full, and says that he means to end his life by eating, like the cobbler who stretches leather with his teeth, until he reaches the end heaven has determined for him; there is no greater madness than wanting to despair. The knight finds the reasons more those of a philosopher than of a madman, and, after eating, asks his squire a favor: that, while he sleeps, the squire step away and give himself, with Rocinante's reins, three hundred or four hundred lashes, on account of the three thousand and some that he owes for the disenchantment of Dulcinea del Toboso, since it is a pity that the poor lady is enchanted through his carelessness. Sancho replies that there is much to say: let them sleep for now, and afterward God will say. To whip oneself in cold blood is a hard thing, even more so on a body poorly sustained and worse fed; let the lady Dulcinea have patience, for when least expected he will see her turned into a sieve of lashes, and "as long as there is life, there is hope." The two of them sleep, leaving Rocinante and the gray ass to graze at will.

They wake late and head for an inn they can make out a league away. Don Quixote calls it an inn, unlike his usual custom of calling every one a castle, and Sancho thanks heaven. The innkeeper offers everything that air, earth, and sea produce, and the list contradicts itself: he has no chickens, because the kites have ravaged them, nor pullets, because he sent them to be sold, nor veal or kid; what he has "really and truly" are two cow's trotters that look like veal hands, or two veal hands that look like cow's trotters, cooked with chickpeas, onion, and bacon, and they are saying "eat me, eat me." Sancho takes them for his own. For the innkeeper, the other guests are "of the very highest rank" and bring their own cook and pantry; Sancho replies that no one is more distinguished than his master, but that his master's profession does not allow for pantries, and that they fill themselves on acorns and medlars in a meadow. That was the conversation, without Sancho wanting to go any further when the man asked him what his master's profession was.

Analysis

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Chapter LX: Roque Guinart, the Bandit

Justice and LawFreedom and Oppression

Chapter summary

Don Quixote leaves the inn by the most direct road to Barcelona without touching Zaragoza, so great is his desire to refute the new historian. More than six days pass without anything worth writing down, and night catches them off the road, among oaks and cork trees. Sancho Panza, who has had his snack, falls asleep at once; the knight, whom imaginings keep awake more than hunger, goes back and forth in his thoughts through Montesinos's cave, through Dulcinea del Toboso turned into a peasant woman, through Merlin's words about the disenchantment. He despairs at the squire's laxity and lack of charity, for in his view Sancho gave himself only five lashes, an uneven and small number compared with those still owed, and he reasons thus:

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Chapter LXI: The Entrance into Barcelona

Chapter summary

Don Quixote spends three days and three nights with Roque Guinart and, even if he spent three hundred years there, he would never run out of things to see and admire in that way of life: there they wake at dawn, here they eat, now they flee without knowing from whom, now they wait without knowing for whom, they sleep standing and interrupt their sleep, they move from one place to another, always with spies posted, sentinels listening, and the matches of their arquebuses blown, although almost all of them use pedreñales.

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Chapter LXII: The Enchanted Head and the Print Shop

Language and Narration

Chapter summary

The host of Don Quixote is named Don Antonio Moreno, a wealthy and discreet knight, fond of honest and affable amusement. He looks for ways to show his guest's madness without harm to him, for, the narrator says, the jokes that hurt are not jokes, and no pastime is worth anything if it is at the expense of a third party. He has him disarmed and places him, in his tight buckskin suit, at a balcony over one of the main streets, in view of the people and the boys, who look at him as at a monkey; the liveried horsemen run again in front of him, as if they had been put there only for him. Sancho Panza, delighted, thinks he has found, without knowing how, another wedding of Camacho, another house like that of Don Diego de Miranda, another castle like the duke's. At table, with Don Antonio's friends, they treat the knight as a knight-errant, and he, puffed up, cannot contain his joy. Don Antonio teases Sancho: he has heard that he is so fond of blancmange and meatballs that, if any are left over, he keeps them in his chest for the next day. Sancho denies it, saying he is more clean than greedy, and Don Quixote praises him, to the point of saying that in his government he learned to eat grapes with a fork, and even pomegranate seeds. Sancho tells of the government of Barataria in a few words, and Don Quixote tells it in detail, to the delight of the listeners.

When the tablecloths are removed, Don Antonio leads Don Quixote to a private room, where there is no adornment but a jasper table on a jasper pedestal, and on it, in the manner of the heads of Roman emperors, a bronze head. He asks for secrecy, and the knight swears and says that he has ears to hear and no tongue to speak. Don Antonio explains that the head was made by one of the greatest enchanters in the world, a Pole, a disciple of Escotillo, for a thousand crowns, and that it has the property of answering in the ear whatever is asked of it; only on Fridays is it mute, and since today is Friday, they will have to wait until tomorrow. In the afternoon they take the knight out for a stroll, not armed but in street clothes, in a cloak of tawny cloth that would make ice sweat, on a large mule with an easy gait, and on his back, without his noticing, they sew a parchment with large letters: "This is Don Quixote de la Mancha." They have Sancho kept inside the house so that he does not go out. Those who read the sign name him, and Don Quixote marvels that he is known by everyone, even by boys who never saw him, and says that the prerogative of errant chivalry is great, for it makes known and famous whoever professes it in every corner of the earth. Don Antonio replies that fire cannot be hidden and virtue cannot fail to be known. A Castilian reads the sign and cries out, in a fit of exasperation, how he managed to get so far without being killed by the countless sticks he carries on his back: he is mad, and if he were mad alone and within the walls of his own madness it would be less harmful, but he has the knack of making mad and feeble-minded all who deal with him; let him go home and look after his property, his wife, and his children. Don Antonio tells him to be on his way and not to give advice to those who do not ask for it, for Don Quixote is very sensible; the Castilian replies that advising a good man is kicking against the goad, but it grieves him greatly that the fine wit they say he has should be wasted entirely through the channel of errant chivalry, and he swears to give no more advice to anyone, even if he lives longer than Methuselah. The boys and the people read the sign so hurriedly that Don Antonio is obliged to take it down, as one takes down something else.

That night there is a ball at the house: Don Antonio's wife, a lady of rank and cheerful spirit, invites her friends to honor the guest and to enjoy his never-before-seen madness. Two of them, playful by nature, drag him to dance with such insistence that they grind him down "not only in body, but in soul." Hard-pressed, as if in secret, he disdains them also in secret, and, pressed by their advances, he raises his voice and shouts "Fugite, partes adversae!": let them leave him in peace, ill-favored thoughts, and let the ladies come to terms with their desires, for she who is queen of his, the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso, does not permit that other women's desires should subjugate and subdue him. He sits down in the middle of the room, on the floor, worn out from the exertion, and Don Antonio orders him carried bodily to bed. The first to take hold of him is Sancho, who reproaches him: does he think all brave men are dancers and all knights-errant are ballet dancers? There are those who would sooner kill a giant than do a caper, and if it were a matter of stamping, he would make up for his master's lack, for he stamps like a gerfalcon, but when it comes to dancing he does not score a point. With these words he makes those at the ball laugh and puts his master to bed, wrapped up so he may sweat out the chill of the dance.

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Reading of the Part

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