The Wonders of Montesinos' Cave — Don Quixote

In the afternoon shade Don Quixote tells Sancho and the scholar cousin what he saw underground: a recess where rope and weariness led him to sleep, then a crystal palace where Montesinos himself declared Don Quixote the knight destined to reveal the cave's secrets to the world.

Montesinos showed living Durandarte on a marble tomb, retold how he extracted the heart with a burnished poniard for Belerma after Roncesvalles, and described Merlin's enchantments that turned Ruidera and her daughters into the lakes of La Mancha while Guadiana became a melancholy river. Durandarte sang his old request, sighed "patience and shuffle," and Belerma passed in mourning with the mummied heart while her damsels wept. When Montesinos compared her beauty to Dulcinea, Quixote rebuked him because comparisons are odious and the peerless Dulcinea is what she is.

The cousin marvels how so much could happen in one descent. Sancho says barely an hour passed; Quixote insists he spent three days and nights without eating or sleeping among the enchanted, who neither dine nor close their eyes. Sancho wanted Quixote to kick Montesinos and pluck his beard, but the knight refused out of respect for the enchanted aged. Sancho applies tell me what company thou keepest, then declares the whole rigmarole was stuffed into his master's mind by Merlin's enchanters, since Sancho secretly knows the truth about Dulcinea's supposed transformation.

Quixote answers that he saw and touched everything, then adds the climax: Dulcinea skipping in the meadow with the same country girls from the Toboso road, a companion who said Dulcinea kissed his hands and begged half a dozen reals for a new dimity petticoat, and a leap of two yards after he gave four reals with a vow to disenchant her. Sancho, knowing he himself staged Dulcinea's enchantment, cries that sorcery has driven his master mad, while Quixote stands firm that the apocryphal adventure is true to him.