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Don Quixote · Part Two

Mirrors, Lions, and Camacho

LoveAppearance and RealityHonor and ReputationMadness

Section summary

With the enchanted Dulcinea behind him, the gentleman returns to the road, and the Second Part begins to test what he sees and what he is: a cart of players, a knight of mirrors who is the bachelor in disguise, a sensible gentleman who takes him for a madman, two lions in a cage. The wedding of Camacho closes the set with a ruse of love in which the poor man defeats the rich one, and the knight who defended the parents' choice sides with the lovers.

Chapter XI: The Cart of the Courts of Death

Appearance and Reality

Chapter summary

Don Quixote goes on pensively after El Toboso, so absorbed in the "bad joke" the enchanters played on him, changing Dulcinea del Toboso into a village girl, that he lets the reins go slack and leaves Rocinante to graze. Sancho Panza rouses him with a saying that sadness was made for men and not for beasts, and sends the enchantments to the devil, because the health of a knight-errant is worth more than all the transformations on earth. The gentleman reprimands him for blaspheming against the enchanted lady and holds him responsible for her misfortune, the daughter of the envy that the wicked bear her. Sancho, who knows better than anyone what he saw on the road, agrees with a verse of lament, and Don Quixote seizes the occasion to correct the portrait: Sancho said that her eyes were of pearls, but eyes that look like pearls are more like a sea bream's than a lady's; Dulcinea's must be green emeralds, with two heavenly arches for eyebrows, and the pearls belong to the teeth, whose place Sancho has mixed up. Sancho gives in ("her beauty disturbed me just as much as your grace's ugliness") and reveals the worry that occupies him: what will a defeated giant do, sent to present himself to the lady, if he does not know where to find her and, even if they came across her in the middle of the street, would not recognize her "any more than my father." Don Quixote answers with an expedient: he will have the first defeated giants go back to tell what happened to them, and then it will be seen whether they see her. It is the first movement of the Second Part in which the gentleman subjects the enchantment to a test, and the test refers to other men, never to Sancho.

Analysis

In this conversation the cart appears, uncovered, with the Devil at the helm, Death with a human face, an Angel with painted wings, an Emperor with a crown, Cupid without his blindfold, and a knight in full armor with a feathered hat in place of a helmet. The Devil answers mildly to Don Quixote's question about Charon's boat: they are reciters of the company of Angulo the Bad, who this morning, on the octave of Corpus, performed the play of the Courts of Death and are to repeat it this afternoon in another place, and, so as not to waste time taking costumes on and off, they go as they are dressed. Don Quixote, who on seeing the cart imagined an adventure, corrects himself aloud:

así como vi este carro, imaginé que alguna grande aventura se me ofrecía; y ahora digo que es menester tocar las apariencias con la mano para dar lugar al desengaño, as soon as I saw this cart, I imagined that some great adventure was offering itself to me; and now I say that one must touch appearances with one's hand to make room for disillusionment.

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Chapter XII: The Comedy of the World and the Knight of the Wood

Chapter summary

They spend the night under tall trees, and Don Quixote, on the advice of Sancho Panza, eats what was in the grey ass's baggage. Sancho congratulates himself on having chosen as his prize the offspring of the three mares instead of the spoils of the first adventure ("better a bird in the hand than a vulture flying"), and the gentleman laments having been prevented from tearing off, to give the squire at least, the golden crown that adorned the Empress and the painted wings of Cupid. Sancho answers that the scepter and crown of a counterfeit emperor are never of pure gold, but of gilded tinsel or tin foil. Don Quixote agrees and goes further: the props of the comedy must be feigned, like the comedy itself, which he wants Sancho to hold in good regard, and with it those who perform it and those who write it, because all of them serve a great good of the commonwealth:

Analysis

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Chapter XIII: The Two Squires

Chapter summary

The masters tell of their loves, the squires tell of their lives, and the story, says the narrator, follows the young men first. The Knight's squire opens the subject: laborious is the life of a squire to a knight-errant, who eats his bread in the sweat of his brow, one of the curses God laid upon our first parents. Sancho Panza adds that he eats it also "in the cold of the body," and that often a day or two pass without breakfast, unless it is the wind that blows. All this, says the other, is borne for the hope of the reward: within a few strokes the squire will see himself rewarded with the government of some insula or a county of good standing. Sancho has already told his master that he is content with an insula, and that the master, so noble and generous, has promised it to him many times; the Knight's squire would be content with a canonry, which his master has already arranged for him. Sancho says they wanted to advise his own master to become an archbishop, and that he wanted only to be an emperor, and that then he trembled, for, though he has the look of a man, he is "too brutish to be in the Church." It is at this point that the other contradicts him:

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Chapter XIV: The Knight of the Mirrors

Appearance and Reality

Chapter summary

While the squires eat and drink, the Knight of the Wood tells Don Quixote what his lady demands of him. Casildea de Vandalia, "without peer" in the greatness of her body, her station, and her beauty, rewards his good thoughts by sending him on labors like those of Hercules: to challenge the giantess Giralda of Seville, who, without leaving her place, is the most fickle woman in the world, and to conquer her, because for more than a week only north winds have blown; to weigh the stones of the Bulls of Guisando; to hurl himself into the abyss of Cabra and bring back an account of what the chasm hides. Once the three are done, his hopes remain "dead as dead," the orders and disdains "alive as alive," and the last command is to travel through Spain and make all the knights-errant confess that she is the most beautiful and he the most valiant and well-enamored knight in the orb. But what puffs him up most is having defeated in single combat the famous Don Quixote de la Mancha, and having made him confess that his Casildea is more beautiful than Dulcinea del Toboso:

Analysis

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Chapter XV: Who the Knight of the Mirrors Was

Madness

Chapter summary

Don Quixote continues "in extreme contentment, pride, and vainglory" over the victory against a knight as brave as he imagines the Knight of the Mirrors was, and he counts on the defeated man's word to know whether the enchantment of his lady still holds. Don Quixote thought one thing and the defeated man another, who for the moment could think only of where to poultice his ribs. The narrator then explains what the previous chapter left unsaid. When Sansón Carrasco advised the gentleman to take up again his abandoned knight-errantry, he had already come to an agreement with the priest and the barber on how to keep him at home, quiet and still, without being stirred up by ill-sought adventures. The council decided, by common vote and Carrasco's particular opinion, that they should let him go, since holding him back seemed impossible, and that the bachelor should come out on the road to meet him as a knight-errant and do battle with him, "for there would be no lack of cause," and defeat him, considering it an easy thing, with a pact that the defeated man would be at the victor's mercy. Once Don Quixote was defeated, the bachelor would order him to return to the village and not leave his house for two years, or until ordered otherwise. It was clear that Don Quixote would comply, so as not to violate the laws of chivalry, and it might be that during the time of confinement his vanities would be forgotten, or some suitable remedy for his madness would be found. Carrasco agreed, and Tomé Cecial, compadre and neighbor of Sancho Panza, "a cheerful man of sound wit," offered himself as squire, and put on the false nose, the mask, so that his compadre would not recognize him. They nearly reached the adventure of the cart of Death, and came upon the two of them in the woods. The narrator concludes, in a moralizing tone, that if it were not for Don Quixote's extraordinary thoughts, which made him conclude that the bachelor was not the bachelor, the sir bachelor would have remained forever unable to graduate as a licentiate, "for not having found nests where he thought he would find birds."

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Chapter XVI: Don Diego de Miranda

Chapter summary

With the joy and pride just described, Don Quixote keeps imagining himself, because of the victory, the bravest knight-errant in the world; he considers finished whatever adventures may come his way, holds enchantments and enchanters in low regard, and forgets the blows, the stone that knocked out half his teeth, the ingratitude of the galley slaves, the rain of stakes from the Yanguesans. Sancho Panza pulls him out of this with the memory of the compadre Tomé Cecial's nose, and the gentleman, who finds it nonsense, reasons: what sense would it make for Carrasco to come armed to fight him, if he was never his enemy or rival in arms? Sancho replies that then there were no two other men in the world to whom the two knights resembled, and the master replies that all of it is the artifice of magicians, who, foreseeing the victory, put his friend's face on the defeated man, so that friendship would come between the edge of the sword and the rigor of the arm, and that he has proof of how easy it is to change faces right there in Toboso. The narrator says that Sancho knew the transformation of Dulcinea del Toboso had been his own trick and deceit, and so the master's fantasies did not satisfy him; but, so as not to reveal his own deception, he did not answer.

Just then, from behind, a man comes up on them riding a beautiful dappled mare, wearing a green coat of fine cloth lined with tawny velvet, a velvet hunting cap of the same, a Moorish scimitar hanging from a wide green-and-gold belt, and spurs painted with green varnish. Don Quixote invites him to keep them company, and Sancho assures him that Rocinante is the most honest horse in the world, and that once he and his master went astray, they both paid for it dearly. The man in green looks at the gentleman, helmetless, whom Sancho carries like a bundle on the saddle of the gray donkey, and this figure seems to him one never before seen on earth. Don Quixote reads the desire in his hesitation and anticipates the question: he left his homeland, pawned his estate, gave up his comforts, and surrendered to the arms of Fortune to revive dead knight-errantry, aiding widows, protecting maidens, and favoring married women, orphans, and wards, a duty that belongs to knights-errant. And, "for my valiant, many, and Christian deeds," he has earned being in print in almost every nation: thirty thousand volumes of his history have been printed. He says who he is: Don Quixote de la Mancha, the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance.

Analysis

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Chapter XVII: The Lions

Honor and Reputation

Chapter summary

When Don Quixote was shouting to Sancho Panza to bring him the helmet, the squire was buying some curds the shepherds were selling him, and, pressed by his master's haste, not knowing where to put them and not wanting to lose them, since he had already paid for them, he put them inside the helmet. The gentleman says he understands little of adventures, or that what he sees there is one that obliges him to take up arms; Don Diego observes that the cart can only be carrying His Majesty's coin, and he answers that a man forewarned is half the battle, that he has visible and invisible enemies, and does not know when, where, or under what shapes they will attack him. He puts on the helmet without looking, the curds are squeezed, and the whey runs down his face and beard, and he takes the sweat for fear of adventures, or for the melting of his brains. He wipes himself, sees the "white curds," smells them, and accuses Sancho of being a traitor, a rogue, and an evil-eyed squire. Sancho answers with composure and feigned innocence: if they are curds, let him give them to him and he will eat them; but may the devil eat them, since he must have been the one who put them there, for how would he dare to dirty your grace's helmet? By my faith, he must also have enchanters who pursue him as a creature and limb of his master, and it was they who put the filth there to stir the anger of your grace's patience and make him, as usual, pound his ribs; this time they have slipped, because he trusts the good judgment of his master, who will have considered that he has no curds, nor milk, nor anything of worth, and that if he did have them, he would put them in his stomach rather than in the helmet. "Anything may be," answers Don Quixote.

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Chapter XVIII: The House of the Green Coat

Madness

Chapter summary

Don Diego's house is large, in the manner of a village house, with the coat of arms in rough stone over the door that faces the street, the wine cellar in the courtyard, the storage pit at the entrance, and many earthenware jars all around which, being from Toboso, renew in Don Quixote the memory of his enchanted Dulcinea, and he, sighing and without looking at those present, recites a line of Garcilaso and addresses "the Toboso jars." The student poet and his mother, Doña Cristina, who come out to receive him, are left stunned at the sight of the figure. Don Quixote goes to kiss their hands, and Don Diego introduces him as "a knight-errant and the bravest and most discreet man in the world." The narrator says that the translator of the story judged it better to pass over in silence the minutiae of the house, which have more of cold digression than of truth; and he tells how, after being disarmed by Sancho Panza, the gentleman washes his head and face with five or six buckets of water, which still comes out the color of whey, "thanks to Sancho's gluttony and the purchase of his black curds."

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Chapter XIX: Camacho's Betrothed and the Spurned Shepherd

Love

Chapter summary

Shortly after leaving Don Diego's house, Don Quixote meets two men who seem to be clerics or students and two farmers, mounted on four asses: one student carries a bundle of green buckram with some white grana cloth and two pairs of cordovan stockings, the other two new black fencing swords with their points. The farmers carry things bought in a large town. The gentleman offers himself as company and says who he is, by his proper name Don Quixote de la Mancha and by his epithet the Knight of the Lions. To the farmers it is talk in Greek or jargon; the students immediately understand the weakness of his brain, but look at him with respect. One of them invites him to the richest wedding to be celebrated in La Mancha, that of a farmer, the richest in the land, and a farm girl, the most beautiful that men have ever seen: Camacho the Rich, twenty-two years old, and Quiteria the Beautiful, eighteen, in a meadow near the village. Camacho is generous, and he has had the whole meadow decked with boughs, so that the sun will have to strain if it wants to visit the green grasses, and there are sword dances and bell dances, not to mention the sapateado dancers. But the thing that will make this wedding most memorable, says the student, is what he imagines the spurned Basilio will do there.

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Chapter XX: The Wedding of Camacho the Rich

Love

Chapter summary

As soon as the dawn lets the sun dry the pearls of her hair, Don Quixote gets up and calls Sancho Panza, who is still snoring. Before waking him, he salutes his sleep: blessed is the one who sleeps without envy or enchanters, without jealousy of a lady, without debts or the worry of feeding his small, anxious family the next day, since the limits of his desires go no further than tending his donkey, while the care of Sancho's person rests on his master's shoulders, "the counterweight and burden that nature and custom placed on lords." The servant sleeps, the master keeps watch, and the barrenness of the land afflicts the master and not the servant. Sancho, awakened with the tip of the lance, says that from the direction of the arbor rises more the smell of roast bacon than of rushes and thyme, and that weddings that begin with such smells must be abundant. The gentleman calls him a glutton and wants to go see what the scorned Basilio is doing. Sancho comments that, had Basilio not been poor, marrying Quiteria would be fine; the poor man should be content with what he finds and not ask for "popcorn in the middle of the sea"; Camacho can wrap Basilio in reals, and Quiteria would be a fool to refuse his finery and jewels for Basilio's skill at throwing the bar and handling the sword, which for a good throw or a graceful feint do not earn a quartilla of wine at the tavern. "The best foundation in the world is money." Don Quixote asks him to end the harangue, and Sancho invokes one of the articles of the agreement they made before their last sally, that he could say whatever he wished, provided he did not speak against his neighbor or against the authority of his master. Don Quixote replies that he does not remember any such article and, even if it were so, he wants him to be silent and come along.

They enter the arbor. Sancho sees, on a spit made from a whole elm, a whole steer; a respectable mountain of blazing firewood; six pots made from half jars, each big enough for a butcher's stall, where whole sheep hide like doves; hares without fur and hens without feathers hanging from the trees, game of every kind; more than sixty wineskins, each of two arrobas and a bit more, full of fine wine; heaps of very white bread, cheeses stacked like walls, and two cauldrons of oil larger than a dyer's, in which they fry dough fritters that two paddles lift out and dip into another cauldron of prepared honey. More than fifty cooks, men and women, all clean, diligent, and content; in the belly of the steer, twelve little suckling pigs sewn up. "The wedding's display was rustic, but so abundant that it could feed an army." Sancho takes a fancy to everything, first to the pots, then to the wineskins, and finally to the fritters, and asks a cook to let him dip a morsel of bread in one of the pots. The cook replies that this day is not under the jurisdiction of hunger, "thanks to the rich Camacho," and, seeing that Sancho has no ladle, he plunges a cauldron into one of the half jars and pulls out three hens and two geese, which he hands over with the spoon and all, because "Camacho's wealth and contentment supply everything."

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Chapter XXI: Basilio's Ruse

LoveFreedom and Oppression

Chapter summary

While Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are still talking, great shouts are heard: the mares run out to meet the bride and groom, who arrive surrounded by instruments and displays, with the priest, the families of both, and the most distinguished people of the neighboring villages. Sancho, on seeing the bride, says that she does not come dressed as a farm girl but as "a gallant courtier": her pendants can only be fine coral; the green palmilla of Cuenca, thirty-hair velvet; her rings of jet, gold, and a great deal of gold, with white pearls as white as curds, each one worth an eye from one's face; and he swears in his soul that she is a real and proper girl who would pass the tests of the Flemish banks. The gentleman laughs at the rustic praises and thinks that, apart from Dulcinea, he has never seen a more beautiful woman. Quiteria comes somewhat faded from the bad night that brides always spend getting ready. They reach a platform decorated with rugs and branches, where the betrothals are to be made, when a voice is heard behind them: "wait a moment, people as inconsiderate as they are hasty."

It is Basilio, in a black tunic with crimson flames, crowned with mournful cypress, with a long staff in his hand. He arrives tired and out of breath, plants the staff in the ground, and, with a trembling and hoarse voice, eyes fixed on Quiteria, says that she knows that, while he lives, she cannot take a husband, and that, hoping time and diligence would improve his fortune, he kept the decorum her honor required; but she wants to make lord of what is hers another man, to whom wealth serves not only as good fortune but as "most excellent fortune." He will undo the impossible by removing himself from the middle: "long live Camacho with the ungrateful Quiteria, and let poor Basilio die, whose poverty clipped the wings of his fortune and put him in the grave!" He pulls the staff, which hides a sword, and throws himself upon it; the bloodied point comes out at his back, and the unhappy man lies soaked in his own blood. The friends rush to him, Don Quixote leaves Rocinante and takes him in his arms, and believes he has not yet expired. The priest, who is present, does not want the sword removed before he confesses him, because removing it and dying would happen all at once. Basilio, coming to himself a little, asks, in his last and forced moment, for Quiteria's hand in marriage, so that his temerity will have an excuse, since by it he gains the good of being hers. The priest tells him to attend to the health of his soul before the pleasures of the body; Basilio replies that he will not confess unless Quiteria first gives him her hand in marriage. Don Quixote shouts that the request is very just, reasonable, and easy, and that Mr. Camacho will be as honored receiving Mrs. Quiteria as the widow of the valiant Basilio as if he were receiving her from her father: "here there must be only one yes, for the marriage bed of these nuptials will be the grave." Camacho, stunned and confused, yields to the pleas of Basilio's friends, who ask him not to let the man's soul be lost by departing in despair, and says that if Quiteria wishes, he is content, since it is only a matter of postponing for a moment the fulfillment of his desires.

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Reading of the Part

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