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Don Quixote: Sancho

On the plains of Montiel stood a score of big windmills. Don Quixote took them for outrageous giants and prepared to do battle against them, and, despite Sancho's protests that their huge arms were only vanes, he plunged the rowels into Rocinante's thin flanks and with couched lance dashed off to the encounter. The wind blew violently and the knight and his steed were whirled away into the field, where they lay motionless and as if dead; his lance was smashed to flinders. Sancho hastened to the aid of his master and found him unable to stir; but he was soon ready to go on again. Their next adventure was with two monks riding on mules as big as dromedaries, in company with a coach in which sat a lady escorted by men on horseback. Don Quixote imagined that adventurers had captured a princess and in the haughtiest terms bade them release her. Then without further parley he drove against the monks, one of whom ran away, while the other fell off his mule. Sancho nimbly slipped from his ass and began to strip the luckless man; while he was engaged in this legitimate appropriation of the spoils of battle two muleteers of the train overset him, tore out his beard by handfuls, mauled him, and left him senseless. Don Quixote engaged in a terrific combat with one of the lady's guard, who sliced off half of his helmet and one of his ears. Undaunted, the knight pressed the combat to victory, but just as he was about to give the finishing stroke, the frightened lady begged him to desist, and he complied on condition that the defeated opponent should go and present himself before the peerless Dulcinea, who was in reality a buxom woman known through all La Mancha for her skill in salting pork and who had never deigned to look at her amorous neighbor.

A few days later, bruised and battered in untoward adventures, they came upon a flock of sheep which Don Quixote conceived to be a prodigious army composed of an infinite number of nations led by mighty kings. He spurred like a thunderbolt from the top of a hillock, shouting his battle-challenge, putting the hapless sheep to flight and trampling both the living and the slain. Impatient to meet the commander of the enemy, he shouted: "Where, where art thou, haughty Alifanfaron?"

At that moment the shepherds rallied in defense of their flocks and overwhelmed the unlucky knight, first with stones and then with cudgels, leaving him in a desperate case, with nearly all his teeth knocked out or loosened, and his ribs half broken.

Did this adventure discourage him? Not at all. It was all a part of chivalry. He and Sancho rode on in dolorous discourse. They were overtaken by night and had no shelter or food. Suddenly appeared a band of about twenty horsemen, all in white robes, with torches in their hands and followed by a hearse draped in black. It was the funeral of a gentleman of Segovia. Don Quixote took it to be the train of some knight either killed or desperately wounded, and, assured that it was his duty to avenge the misfortunes of a brother-in-arms, halted the cortege and demanded an explanation. The replies of the clergymen failed to satisfy him and he flew at them in high dudgeon. Encumbered by their long robes, they became easy victims and all took to flight. They possessed themselves of the edibles deserted by the clergymen, but, unfortunately, had nothing to drink, nor did they dare stir from the forest because of the awful clamor made by a fulling-mill which Don Quixote supposed to be enchantment.

The next morning they met a barber riding on an ass and wearing his brass basin on his head to save his hat from the rain. Don Quixote recognized this as the golden helmet of Mambrino, and flew at this enemy as if he would grind him to powder. The barber fled, leaving his helmet, which Sancho appropriated, though it seemed to him merely a common dish.

They came to another inn. In the night Don Quixote, while sound asleep and dreaming, enjoyed the most famous battle of his career. Dressed in a short shirt which exposed his lean, long, hairy shanks, and wearing a greasy red nightcap, with a blanket wrapped around his left arm for a shield, he was repeatedly plunging his sword into the plump bodies of several giants. Their blood flowed across the floor in wide, crimson streams. Imagine the wrath of the worthy inn-keeper at discovering that his famous guest had disemboweled all his wine-sacks, which were made of goat-skins with the heads left on.

After this Don Quixote was got home by the curate and the barber; but he broke loose again. First he visited his Dulcinea, but came away convinced that through more enchantment she had been changed into a blubber-cheeked, flat-nosed country wench, the pearls of her eyes into gall-nuts, her long golden locks into a cow's tail, and her palace into a hut. He had adventures with strolling actors and lions; he attended the rich Camacho's wedding; he explored the deep cave of Montesinos; he rode on a magic bark and visited the nameless duke and duchess through whose complaisance Sancho was granted his ambition to rule over an island and did it with wisdom worthy of Solomon. Many more adventures followed, but at last Don Quixote returned to his home and recovered his senses on his death-bed, dying as a lovable, high-minded, noble-hearted gentleman.

Cervantes's masterpiece is not all satire. Don Quixote has lucid moments; Sancho's simplicity veils common sense, often expressed in witty proverbs. There is occasional coarseness, but not so much as in Shakespeare. The chief fault is its treatment of insanity, in its author's fondness for cruel and brutal practical jokes, which may perhaps explain the maintenance of bull-fighting as the national amusement of Spain.