The truth of the matter was that in the neighborhood were two villages so small that the apothecary and barbershop in one of them had to serve for both. The village barber had just been summoned to shave and bleed a patient in the adjoining community, so he mounted his ass, armed with a brass basin for the bleeding, and set off. He had got about half-way, when it commenced to rain. Having a new hat, he covered it with the clean basin, that glittered like gold.
But Don Quixote had more sense than his squire, of course, and pursued the unknown knight with the helmet at Rocinante's wildest gallop. When the fear-stricken barber realized that Don Quixote's uplifted spear was aimed at him, he promptly threw himself from his ass and ran all the way home without stopping, leaving his brass basin behind as a trophy for our hero, who could not understand why this helmet had no visor.
"That pagan must have had a very large head," remarked Don Quixote, turning the basin round and round, trying to fit it to his own head, now this way, now that.
"It looks exactly like a barber's basin," said Sancho Panza, who had all he could do to keep from bursting into laughter.
Don Quixote treated this blasphemous thought with scorn, and said he would stop at the next smithy to have its shape changed. His next concern was his stomach; and when they found that the barber's ass carried ample supplies, they soon satisfied their appetites. Sancho now turned the conversation to the rest of the spoils of war; but Don Quixote was unable to make up his mind that it was chivalrous to exchange a bad ass for a good one, as was his squire's wish; so Sancho had to satisfy himself with the barber's trappings.
Then they set out again. Soon Sancho felt the need of unburdening something he had had on his heart for some time. He suggested that instead of roaming about seeking adventures which no one ever witnessed and which therefore remained unsung and unheralded, they go and serve some great emperor engaged in war, so that their achievements and valor might go down to posterity. This struck a resonant chord in his master's heart. In fact, he went into raptures over it, and commenced to rant about all the great honors the future had in store for the Knight of the Rueful Countenance. He cunningly surmised that their first task would be to find a king who had an uncommonly beautiful daughter, for of course he had to marry a princess first of all. The plan excited him to such an extent that for a moment he forgot about the existence of his Dulcinea. The only thing that worried him was his royal lineage; he could not think of any emperor or king whose second cousin he might be. Yet he decided not to trouble too much about that; for were there not two kinds of lineages in the world? And Love always worked wonders: it had since the beginning of time. What would the princess care, if he were a water-carrier's son? And if his future father-in-law should object, all he would have to do would be to carry her off by force.
As Don Quixote went on picturing himself in the most romantic rôles in the history of this as yet unknown kingdom, Sancho began to think it was time for him to be considered as well, when it came to bestowals of honor. Once he had been beadle of a brotherhood, and he had looked so well in a beadle's gown, he said, that he was afraid his wife would burst with pride when she saw him in a duke's robe, with gold and lace and precious stones. Don Quixote thought so, too, but admonished him that he would have to shave his beard oftener, as it was most unkempt. Sancho replied that would be an easy matter, for he would have a barber of his own, as well as an equerry; he knew that all men of fame kept such a man, for once in Madrid he had seen a gentleman followed by a man on horseback as if he had been his tail. He inquired why the gentleman was being followed in that manner and learned it was his equerry. Don Quixote thought Sancho's idea to have a barber was an excellent one, and Sancho urged his master to make haste and find him his island, that he might roll in his glory as a count or a duke.