Variation X
Don Quixote, defeated by the Knight of the White Moon, returns home and resolves to be a shepherd. “Know, sir,” said the Knight of the White Moon, “that I am styled the Bachelor Samson Carrasco, and am one of Don Quixote’s town; whose wild madness hath moved as many of us as know him to compassion, and me amongst the rest most; and believing that the best means to procure his health is to keep him quiet, and so to have him in his own house, I thought upon this device.” So said this knight after the furious battle which is thus described:
“They both of them set spurs to their horses, and the Knight of the White Moon’s being the swifter, met Don Quixote ere he had run a quarter of his career so forcibly (without touching him with his lance, for it seemed he carried it aloft on purpose) that he tumbled horse and man both to the ground, and Don Quixote had a terrible fall; so he got straight on the top of him; and, clapping his lance’s point upon his visor, said, ‘You are vanquished, Knight, and a dead man, if you confess not, according to the conditions of our combat.’ Don Quixote, all bruised and amazed, without heaving up his visor, as if he had spoken out of a tomb, with a faint and weak voice, said, ‘Dulcinea del Toboso is the fairest woman in the world, and I the unfortunatest Knight on earth; and it is not fit that my weakness defraud this truth; thrust your lance into me, Knight, and kill me, since you have bereaved me of my honor.’ ‘Not so truly,’ quoth he of the White Moon, ‘let the fame of my Lady Dulcinea’s beauty live in her entireness; I am only contented that the grand Don Quixote retire home for a year, or till such time as I please, as we agreed, before we began the battle.’ And Don Quixote answered that, so nothing were required of him in prejudice of his Lady Dulcinea, he would accomplish all the rest, like a true and punctual knight.” The variation portrays the fight. The pastoral theme heard in the second variation—the battle with the sheep—reappears. Don Quixote loses one by one his illusions.