The Sanity Test and the Seville Madhouse — Don Quixote

Part Two opens a month after the ox-cart homecoming. The curate and barber avoid Don Quixote lest they reawaken his madness, but visit his niece and housekeeper and hear that he sometimes sounds sane. They test him in bed, green waistcoat and red cap, and find him discussing government reform with such good sense that they almost believe the enchanted ride cured him; then they deliberately mention the Turkish fleet threatening Naples, Sicily, and Malta.

Don Quixote advises the king to proclaim a day when every knight-errant in Spain must assemble; even half a dozen might suffice, for one alone could destroy the Turk as if an army had but one throat. He refuses to detail the plan lest some courtier steal the credit. The niece groans that he wants to ride out again and vows he will die a knight-errant. To undercut the fantasy, the barber tells of a Seville madhouse where a licentiate in canon law persuades an archbishop's chaplain he is cured, bids farewell to the inmates with talk of empty stomachs and full brains, and is undone when another madman calling himself Jupiter vows three years without rain on the city; the freed man answers as Neptune, the governor laughs, and the chaplain strips him and leaves him behind.

Quixote catches the barber's comparison and delivers a long defence of knight-errantry against a slothful age of brocade instead of mail, open-field sleeping, and bark voyages that deserve to be written on brass. The curate pretends he cannot believe Amadis, Roland, Reinaldos, and the Twelve Peers ever lived. Quixote replies with detailed portraits from the books, debates giants through Goliath and Sicilian bones, and argues Angelica was flighty while poets who are scorned write satires. Everyone enjoys the nonsense until an outcry in the courtyard from the niece and housekeeper interrupts them; Sancho is forcing his way in while they call him the vagabond who led their master astray.