Volume 1, Chapter 16
Sancho tells the innkeeper, who can see that Don Quijote lies injured on the donkey's back, that he had fallen off a high rock. His sympathetic wife quickly begins to tend to Don Quijote, with the help of her comely daughter and an extremely homely servant girl named Maritornes.
He and Sancho are taken to an attic that has a good view of the stars (through its roof) and given poor beds. As Don Quijote's injuries are tended to and plastered, Sancho informs them that Don Quijote is one of the best knights in the world. Don Quijote, (overhearing the conversation), adds his two cents. Although it would be degrading for him to blow his own horn, she is a very lucky woman to have him as her guest and he will remember her always with gratitude.
Topic Tracking: Grandiosity 10
Now they happen to be sharing the attic with a very successful muledriver to whom Maritornes has promised to visit after everyone is asleep. Sleep eludes Don Quijote (because of his aches and pains) and he passes the time exchanging reality for fantasy and imagines that the innkeeper's daughter, (to him -- the lord of castle's daughter), has fallen in love with him. And, that she means to come to his bed that night and try to compromise his virtue (remember, he is sworn to Dulcinea)! When the more than homely Maritornes enters the room, he transforms her into the beautiful daughter and captures her in his bed and speaks sweet idiocies to her:
"And the good gentleman was so far gone in his fantasy that neither the touch, the smell, nor anything else about the good damsel -- which would have made anyone but a muledriver vomit -- disillusioned him in the slightest." Volume 1, Chapter 16, pg. 89
The muledriver, not having a weak stomach and angry that his amorous evening is being stolen, punches Don Quijote and then stomps upon the whole length of Don Quijote's body. The bed crashes, the innkeeper comes up to the attic ready to beat Maritornes (whom he suspects is at the root of this whole affair). She quickly hides under the covers on top of a sleeping Sancho. Sancho mistakes her for a nightmare and begins to hit her. She hits him right back and once the muledriver and the innkeeper enter the fray -- it's a free-for-all. A constable staying there enters and tells them all to stop in the name of the law. He mistakes the unconscious Don Quijote for dead and yells out for the inn's doors to be locked. By the time he is able to get a light to see, all the parties involved are safely in their beds.
Topic Tracking: Idealized Women 11
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