The First Sally — Don Quixote

Don Quixote slips out before dawn through the back door, armour on, Rocinante saddled, convinced the world is losing greatness by the hour. On the open plain a worse thought hits him: he has not been dubbed a knight, and chivalry law forbids what he is about to do. Reason says stop. His craze is stronger. He will have the first stranger he meets confer knighthood, as the books allow, and let his horse choose the road because that is where adventures live.

All day he rides talking to himself, rehearsing the florid chronicle future sages will write about this morning and addressing Dulcinea as if she has banished him from her presence. Nothing happens. No foe appears. Night finds him exhausted and hungry, and an inn becomes a castle with turrets, silver pinnacles, a drawbridge, and a moat.

At the gate two young women on their way to Seville look like ladies of the castle until they laugh at his courtly speech. A swineherd's horn sounds like a dwarf's trumpet. The innkeeper, fat and crafty, humours him as castellan. Quixote keeps his helmet tied with green ribbons while the women feed him through the visor and the landlord pours wine through a reed. When a sowgelder pipes outside, the stale bread whitens, the stockfish becomes trout, and the wenches become princesses in his mind. Yet one fact remains: until he is properly knighted, he cannot lawfully begin any adventure at all.