Don Quixote, defeated by the Knight of the White Moon, returns home and
resolves to be a shepherd. “Know, sir,” said the Knight of the White
Moon, “that I am styled the Bachelor Samson Carrasco, and am one of Don
Quixote’s town; whose wild madness hath moved as many of us as know him
to compassion, and me amongst the rest most; and believing that the best
means to procure his health is to keep him quiet, and so to have him in
his own house, I thought upon this device.” So said this knight after
the furious battle which is thus described:
“They both of them set spurs to their horses, and the Knight of the
White Moon’s being the swifter, met Don Quixote ere he had run a quarter
of his career so forcibly (without touching him with his lance, for it
seemed he carried it aloft on purpose) that he tumbled horse and man
both to the ground, and Don Quixote had a terrible fall; so he got
straight on the top of him; and, clapping his lance’s point upon his
visor, said, ‘You are vanquished, Knight, and a dead man, if you confess
not, according to the conditions of our combat.’ Don Quixote, all
bruised and amazed, without heaving up his visor, as if he had spoken
out of a tomb, with a faint and weak voice, said, ‘Dulcinea del Toboso
is the fairest woman in the world, and I the unfortunatest Knight on
earth; and it is not fit that my weakness defraud this truth; thrust
your lance into me, Knight, and kill me, since you have bereaved me of
my honor.’ ‘Not so truly,’ quoth he of the White Moon, ‘let the fame of
my Lady Dulcinea’s beauty live in her entireness; I am only contented
that the grand Don Quixote retire home for a year, or till such time as
I please, as we agreed, before we began the battle.’ And Don Quixote
answered that, so nothing were required of him in prejudice of his Lady
Dulcinea, he would accomplish all the rest, like a true and punctual
knight.” The variation portrays the fight. The pastoral theme heard in
the second variation—the battle with the sheep—reappears. Don Quixote
loses one by one his illusions.