To this he said nothing save to ask for his old clothes.  And when he was dressed he went down to Dapple’s stall, and embraced his faithful ass with tears in his eyes.  “Come hither, my friend and true companion,” quoth he; “happy were my days, my months, and years, when with thee I journeyed, and all my concern was to mend thy harness and find food for thy little stomach!  But now that I have climbed to the towers of ambition, a thousand woes, a thousand torments, and four thousand tribulations have haunted my soul!” While he spoke he fitted on the pack-saddle, mounted his ass, bade farewell to the people, and departed in peace and great humility.

V.—­The Death of Don Quixote

Meanwhile, Don Quixote had been fooled to the top of his bent in the duke’s castle, and had endured tribulations from maids and men sufficient to deject the finest fortitude.  He was now in the mood to forsake that great castle, and to embrace once more the life of the open road, and so with Sancho Panza he started out to take up the threads of his old life.  After adventures so miraculous as to seem incredible, Don Quixote was laid low in an encounter with a friend of his disguised as a knight, and by this defeat was so broken and humiliated that he thought to turn shepherd and to spend the remainder of his days in a pastoral life.  Sancho cheered him, and kept his heart as high as it would reach in his misery, and together they turned their faces towards home, leaving the future to the disposition of Providence.

As they entered the village, two boys fighting in a field attracted the knight’s attention, and he heard one of them cry, “Never fret yourself, you shall never see her while you have breath in your body!” The knight immediately applied these words to himself and Dulcinea, and nothing that Sancho could say had power to cheer his spirits.  Moreover, the boys of the village, having seen them, raised a shout, and came laughing about them, saying, “Oh, law! here is Gaffer Sancho Panza’s donkey as fine as a lady, and Don Quixote’s beast thinner than ever!” The barber and the curate then came upon the scene and saw their old friend, and went with him to his house.

Here Don Quixote faithfully described his discomfiture in the encounter with another knight, and declared his intention honourably to observe the conditions laid upon him of being confined to his village for a year.

Melancholy increased with the poor knight, and he was seized with a violent fever.  The physician and his friends conjectured that his sickness arose from regret for his defeat and disappointment of Dulcinea’s disenchantment; they did all they could do to divert him, but in vain.  One day he desired them to leave him, and for six hours he slept so profoundly that his niece thought he was dead.  At the end of this time he wakened, and cried with a loud voice, “Blessed be Almighty God for this great benefit He has vouchsafed to me!  His mercies are infinite; greater are they than the sins of men.”