Sancho's Dulcinea Report and Andres Returns — Don Quixote

Quixote presses Sancho for every detail of the visit to Dulcinea, and Sancho keeps spinning a lie he is terrified of breaking. She was winnowing red wheat, not stringing pearls; she smelled goaty from sweat, not Arabian perfume; she tore up the letter unread and sent word over the yard wall with sheep's-milk cheese instead of jewels. Quixote rewrites each answer until peasant labour becomes proof of royal grace.

Sancho urges Quixote to marry Micomicona for the kingdom, take the seacoast, and skip El Toboso for now. Quixote plans to kill the giant first, then explain the delay to Dulcinea. When Sancho points out the contradiction between secret devotion and marching every beaten foe before Dulcinea, Quixote calls it chivalric exaltation while Sancho compares it to loving God only for the perks.

At a spring halt, Andres the boy Quixote freed in Chapter 4 reappears and reverses the rescue story: the master tied him again, flogged him worse, and mocked the knight who meddled and left. Quixote swears to hunt the clown down, but Dorothea reminds him of his boon. Andres refuses future rescue, takes Sancho's bread and cheese, and curses every knight-errant before running off while the company smothers laughter.