Sancho's Night Round of Barataria — Don Quixote

Still angered by the portrait farmer, Sancho tells Doctor Recio that judges must be brass to endure applicants at dinner and bed-time, blames Tirteafuera for starving him, and astonishes the court with elegant speech until Recio allows supper of beef salad and calves' feet, which Sancho eats with greater relish than Milan francolins, preferring ollas podridas rotted enough to smell.

He vows to purge drones from the hive, protect husbandmen, preserve gentlemen's privileges, respect religion, govern without bribes, make honey without inviting flies, and go the rounds after clarions and pages have fed his stomach and Dapple's need; the majordomo marvels that jokes become realities as Sancho marches with staff, secretary, chronicler, and alguacils through the town at night until they hear swords clash.

At a gambling-house quarrel he makes the winner pay a hundred reals to the assailant and thirty to prisoners, banishing the idler ten years, declares he will purge gambling houses though a notary says a great man owns the chief one, then meets a weaver facetious about lance heads who ran from officers' questions and proves no governor can force sleep on a man who chooses to stay awake, so Sancho sends him home with a warning.

Two tipstaffs bring a fair girl in man's dress who first names wrong fathers, then weeping confesses under cleared witnesses she is Diego de la Llana's daughter, shut up ten years until her brother dressed her to see bull-fights and the town, fell in fright when the round approached, and was seized while he fled in petticoats and gold-thread hair; her brother is brought in custody and confirms every word of the childish nocturnal adventure.

The governor clears the crowd so she may speak, sends them home with proverbs on gadding hens, the enamoured head-carver vows to marry her on the morrow, Sancho schemes Sanchica for the brother, and a couple of days later the government overthrows all these plans as Hamete will show, leaving Barataria's night round a lesson in comic justice and sudden marriage schemes before the castle recalls its joke and ends his government.