Don Quixote Ch. 16: Maritornes and the

Summary

The innkeeper sees Don Quixote slung across the ass and asks what is amiss. Sancho says he fell from a rock and bruised his ribs. The hostess, kind-hearted beyond her calling, and her comely daughter, helped by Maritornes the Asturian lass, make a wretched garret bed of four boards, a thin mattress full of pellets, and sheets of buckler leather. While they plaster him from top to toe, the hostess remarks that the wheals look more like blows than a fall. Sancho invents points on the rock, then claims his own aches come from the shock of seeing his master fall, though he is more awake than he is now. He tells Maritornes that a knight-adventurer is a thing seen drubbed today and emperor tomorrow, and that he would not change his hopes for the best title in Spain.

Quixote sits up, takes the hostess by the hand, and thanks her for sheltering him in this castle, adding that he would be her daughter's captive if Dulcinea did not hold him. They understand about as much as if he had been talking Greek, thank him in pothouse phrase, and leave. Maritornes has promised the rich carrier of Arévalo that when the guests are quiet she will come to his pack-saddles, a promise she prides herself on keeping. The inn falls silent under one lantern in the gateway. Quixote, eyes wide with pain, builds the fantasy that the innkeeper's daughter has fallen in love with him and will visit his bed, then resolves to commit no treason to Dulcinea even if Guinevere herself appeared.

The hour arrives. Maritornes enters in her smock, barefoot, feeling her way. Quixote stretches out his arms, grasps her wrist, and makes sackcloth into silk, glass beads into pearls, horse-mane hair into gold of Araby, and stale salad breath into aromatic fragrance. He tells the exalted lady that bruises and pledged faith make the favour impossible. She sweats and struggles without a word. The jealous carrier, who has been listening, delivers a terrible cuff that bathes the knight's mouth in blood, then tramps his ribs until the crazy bed comes down. Maritornes, hearing the innkeeper, crouches on Sancho's mat. Fists fly: carrier on Sancho, Sancho on the lass, she on him, innkeeper on her. The lamp goes out. A cuadrillero of the Old Holy Brotherhood of Toledo gropes in crying Hold in the name of the Jurisdiction, seizes Quixote's beard, finds him motionless, and shouts that they have killed a man. Each drops the contest. Unable to find the extinguished lantern, the officer is compelled to light another lamp at the hearth.

In this chapter:Terms Characters Key Quotes Modern Story

Why This Matters

Checking Perception Against Evidence

Want can recruit your senses before your judgment catches up. Quixote feels Maritornes's sackcloth as silk and her stale breath as fragrance while she struggles to reach the carrier, and one misread touch in the dark sets off a chain of blows until the Holy Brotherhood shouts for order.

Compare what you perceive with what an uninvolved witness would report before you act on the story your desire is writing.

This chapter

Inside the Mind: Maritornes

Maritornes comes in the dark to meet the carrier, and Don Quixote catches her by the wrist. She "dared not utter a word" while he sits her on the bed and talks of Dulcinea. A cry would end the speech and expose the meeting she came for, so the silence holds until the carrier's fists break it.

Continue this thoughtEnchantment Is How a Bruise Becomes Proof

Coming Up in Chapter 17

Quixote wakes calling for Sancho and claims an enchanted Moor interrupted the lord's daughter at his bed. He brews the balsam of Fierabras, refuses to pay the innkeeper on chivalry rule, and rides away while guests blanket Sancho in the yard.

PreviousPrevious Chapter NextNext Chapter

Original text

3,006 wordscomplete

Chapter 16

Maritornes and the Blanketing

OF WHAT HAPPENED TO THE INGENIOUS GENTLEMAN IN THE INN WHICH HE TOOK TO BE A CASTLE The innkeeper, seeing Don Quixote slung across the ass, asked Sancho what was amiss with him. Sancho answered that it was nothing, only that he had fallen down from a rock and had his ribs a little bruised. The innkeeper had a wife whose disposition was not such as those of her calling commonly have, for she was by nature kind-hearted and felt for the sufferings of her neighbours, so she at once set about tending Don Quixote, and made her young daughter,…

Public-domain chapter text, formatted for reading.

Master this chapter. Complete your experience

Purchase the complete book to access all chapters and support classic literature

Buy atAmazon.com

Available in paperback, hardcover, and e-book formats

The Three Musketeers

Alexandre Dumas

Explores identity & self

The Blue Castle

L. M. Montgomery

Explores identity & self

Notes from Underground

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Explores identity & self

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Robert Louis Stevenson

Explores identity & self

Identity & Self-Discovery Moral Dilemmas & Ethics Love & Relationships

Lessons from Don Quixote

Theme-by-theme analyses that connect this book to modern life skills.

Deep diving the literary elements.

Maritornes and the Blanketing

Summary

Why This Matters