Don Quixote Ch. 61: Midnight in El Toboso and

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Midnight in El Toboso and the Palace That Was a Church

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Summary

At midnight Quixote and Sancho enter sleeping El Toboso amid barking dogs, braying asses, and other noises the knight takes for bad omens. Quixote asks Sancho to lead him to Dulcinea's palace. Sancho says it was a little house, and they mistake the church tower for her seat. Sancho calls a graveyard at this hour no good sign.

Quixote admits he has never seen Dulcinea or crossed her threshold, and loves her only by hearsay. Sancho confesses the same: his sight of her and the Sierra Morena answer were hearsay too. Quixote will not have the jest when he himself has told the truth, and calls Sancho a heretic for claiming palaces sit in blind alleys.

A labourer singing of Roncesvalles cannot locate any princess; he is a stranger doing farm work, and believes El Toboso has ladies of quality but no princess. Daylight is coming. Sancho, feverish to get his master out before the old lie is exposed, hurries him into a forest two miles off to hide while he searches by day, promising to speak to Dulcinea and arrange a meeting that will not damage her honour. The embassy, the history says, will need a chapter of its own.

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Why This Matters

Naming Hearsay Before the Address Tests It

Quixote and Sancho search midnight El Toboso for Dulcinea's palace and find a church. Both admit they have never truly seen her; Sancho confesses the Sierra Morena answer was hearsay.

That shared fictions collapse when the quest requires a real place, and buying time only postpones the reckoning.

This chapter

Inside the Mind: Sancho Panza

They have lit upon the church, and Sancho says God grant they may not "light upon our graves," for it is "no good sign" to find one at that hour. He can miss the palace and still read the building as a warning about dying. The wrong address frightens him less as a failed lie than as an omen.

Read the full psychological reading

Coming Up in Chapter 62

The author would have preferred to pass the next chapter over in silence, for Sancho's device to enchant Dulcinea strains belief. Quixote sends Sancho to beg Dulcinea's blessing; Sancho resolves to swear in the first country girl he meets as the princess.

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Original text

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Chapter 61

Midnight in El Toboso and the Palace That Was a Church

WHEREIN IS RELATED WHAT WILL BE SEEN THERE ’Twas at the very midnight hour—more or less—when Don Quixote and Sancho quitted the wood and entered El Toboso. The town was in deep silence, for all the inhabitants were asleep, and stretched on the broad of their backs, as the saying is. The night was darkish, though Sancho would have been glad had it been quite dark, so as to find in the darkness an excuse for his blundering. All over the place nothing was to be heard except the barking of dogs, which deafened the ears of Don Quixote and…

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Midnight in El Toboso and the Palace That Was a Church

Summary

Why This Matters