The Veiled Riders and Dorothea's Reckoning — Don Quixote

Veiled riders arrive at the inn, four men with lances and a woman in white on a side-saddle, and the landlord calls it a fine troop. Dorothea covers her face; Cardenio hides in Quixote's room. The silent lady is set in a chair and sighs like a prisoner. Her servants, hired only two days since, know no names, only that she seems to be going against her will, perhaps to take the veil. When Dorothea offers a woman's help, the veiled gentleman tells her not to trouble herself: it is that lady's way to give no thanks, and not to try for an answer unless she wants a lie. "I have never told a lie," the silent woman says at once. Her unstained truth has made him false.

Cardenio knows the voice. He cries out from behind the door; her veil falls; his opponent's veil falls; Dorothea sees Don Fernando holding Luscinda and faints. Fernando stands as if death-stricken and still does not let go. Luscinda names herself the ivy on Cardenio's wall and asks Fernando to turn love into rage and take her life in her husband's presence if he can do nothing else. Dorothea comes to, kneels, and delivers the claim she has carried through the Sierra: she is his lawful wife by his word, his siege, and Heaven as witness; he cannot have Luscinda, who is Cardenio's; if he will not have her as wife, let him take her as slave, but do not make her parents' old age miserable. Fernando listens until the united force of so many truths is more than he can deny. "Thou hast conquered, fair Dorothea," he says, and opens his arms.

Cardenio catches Luscinda as she falls. Fernando's hand goes to his sword; Dorothea clasps his knees and will not let him undo what Heaven has done. The curate, the barber, Fernando's friends, even Sancho, crowd him with the same argument: death alone can part the other pair, and a gentleman who is a Christian keeps his plighted word. He stoops, embraces Dorothea, and asks her not to reproach him. They trade the rest of the road: her flight in a farm-lad's dress, his rage at the paper in Luscinda's bosom, the convent abduction, her silence and tears all the way to this inn, which for him, he says, is reaching heaven. Sancho weeps too, and afterwards admits he only wept because Princess Micomicona had turned back into Dorothea while his master still slept upstairs.