IN WHICH ARE CONTINUED THE REFINEMENTS WHEREWITH DON QUIXOTE PLAYED THE PART OF A LOVER IN THE SIERRA MORENA
Soon after Sancho had gone, Don Quixote came to the conclusion that the exercises he was putting himself through were much too hard and troublesome. So he decided to change them, and instead of imitating Roland and his fury, he turned to the more melancholy Amadis, whose madness was of a much milder form and needed a less strenuous outlet. But to imitate Amadis, he had to have a rosary, and he had none. For a moment he was in a quandary; but a miracle gave him the inspiration to use the tail of his shirt--which was too long anyhow--and tearing off a long piece, on which he made eleven knots, he repeated quantities of credos and ave-marias on it, there in the wilderness. His love would at times drive him to write verses to his cruel and beloved one on the bark of the trees, all the while he would make moaning sounds of lovesickness. Again he would go about sighing, singing, calling to the nymphs and fauns and satyrs, and, of course, looking for herbs to nourish himself with.
But while Don Quixote exiled himself in the wilds, his servant Sancho Panza was making for El Toboso. On the second day he found himself at the inn at which the incident of his blanket journey had taken place. The smell of food reminded him that it was dinner time; yet he hesitated about entering. As he was standing there, along came two men; and one of them was heard to say: "Is not that Sancho Panza?" "So it is," said the other one; and it turned out to be the curate and the barber of Don Quixote's own village.
At once they approached him. They asked him about his master, but it was not until they had threatened to believe that he had robbed and murdered Don Quixote--for was he not mounted on Rocinante?--that he divulged the secret of his master's hiding-place. He told them of everything; even about his master's strange and unbounded love for the daughter of Lorenzo Corchuelo and the letter he had written to her. When the curate asked to see it, Sancho could not find it; and then he suddenly remembered that Don Quixote had given him neither the letter nor the order for the ass-colts. He turned pale and green, and beat his chest frantically, but it produced no miracle. The curate and the barber told him that the only thing to do was to find Don Quixote and get him to write them anew; and the thought of losing the ass-colts made Sancho only too anxious to return.