Intervention and Defeat — Don Quixote

At dawn Quixote leaves the inn thrilled to be a knight and turns toward home to fetch money, shirts, and a squire. He has barely started when cries lead him into a wood where a farmer flogs a boy named Andres over lost sheep. Quixote commands payment of back wages, settles a quarrel over shoes and bloodlettings, and makes the farmer swear to pay. Andres refuses to go home alone, warning that his master will flay him. Quixote guarantees the oath and rides away satisfied that he has righted the greatest wrong injustice ever conceived.

The guarantee lasts exactly one screen width. The farmer ties Andres up again and beats him worse, laughing while the boy weeps and swears he will find the undoer of wrongs. Quixote, hearing none of this, congratulates Dulcinea on her new subject and halts at a crossroads so Rocinante may choose the path. The horse heads toward its stable until Quixote sees Toledo merchants and turns the meeting into an adventure.

He blocks the road and demands that all the world confess Dulcinea the fairest maiden without seeing her. When a trader jokes that even a one-eyed portrait would do, Quixote charges. Rocinante stumbles, armour pins him down, and a muleteer beats him with fragments of his own lance while he shouts that cowards should stay and fight. The traders leave. Quixote calls the thrashing a regular knight-errant mishap and blames his horse. Battered as he is, he cannot rise.