Altisidora feigns love for Don Quixote, who firmly rejects her

Altisidora feigns love for Don Quixote, who firmly rejects her, in a courtship staged within the Duchess’s castle. A serenade and a pretended faint let Altisidora present herself as a lovesick maiden; Don Quixote reads the performance through the conventions of chivalric romance, but answers it by declaring his unshakable fidelity to Dulcinea of Toboso. The joke then turns physically painful: after a prank involving bells and cats leaves him wounded, Altisidora binds his face and attributes his sufferings to his refusal to love her.

The Serenade at the Window

Don Quixote’s encounter with Altisidora begins on a night when he is already unhappy. His stockings have split, and, though he has found a pair of travelling boots, he goes to bed heavy-hearted and misses Sancho Panza. Unable to sleep in the warm night, he opens a grated window overlooking a garden and hears Altisidora talking with her companion, Emerencia. The castle damsel says that the stranger’s arrival has made her weep rather than sing, while Emerencia urges her to play because Don Quixote is awake. Their exchange is arranged so that he can overhear it: when he gives a pretended sneeze to announce his presence, the women are pleased, since they wanted him to listen.

Altisidora then sings to him with a harp. The verses describe her as a young woman of the household and itemize her appearance, including her flat nose, wide mouth, and teeth compared to topazes. The performance borrows the familiar signs of romance—night, window, music, secrecy, and a woman suffering for love—and Don Quixote recognizes those signs as a scene from the books of chivalry he has read. He concludes that a damsel in the Duchess’s household has fallen in love with him. The staging succeeds in making him hear a conventional love confession, even though the women have arranged the scene to provoke his response.

Fidelity as Don Quixote’s Answer

The serenade does not make Don Quixote waver. It alarms him: he fears that he might yield, and turns his thoughts toward Dulcinea of Toboso. He interprets Altisidora’s supposed passion not as an invitation he could entertain but as a threat to the constancy he owes his chosen lady. His inward response enlarges the incident into a familiar romance predicament, in which queens, empresses, and very young maidens pursue a knight whose heart is already pledged.

When Altisidora’s song ends, Don Quixote answers by insisting that Dulcinea alone possesses the beauty and virtues he can recognize in a woman. He contrasts his imagined tenderness toward her with his rejection of every other woman, and treats fidelity as an absolute condition of his identity as a knight. He then shuts the window sharply and returns to bed displeased, as though the unwanted courtship were a serious misfortune. The response is comic in its disproportion, but its terms are consistent: Don Quixote does not bargain with his vow or accept Altisidora’s attention as a reason to revise it.

A Courtship Continued in Public

The next morning, as Don Quixote dresses to appear before the Duke and Duchess, Altisidora and her companion lie in wait in a gallery. Altisidora pretends to faint when she sees him, and her friend catches her and loosens the front of her dress. Don Quixote immediately understands the swoon as another sign of her love. The companion instead presents it as evidence against knights-errant, whom she calls ungrateful, and tells him that his presence prevents Altisidora from recovering.

Don Quixote does not offer affection in return. He asks for a lute to be placed in his chamber that night and proposes to comfort Altisidora by providing what he regards as the proper remedy: an early disillusion. His answer treats love as a condition that can be ended by promptly correcting the sufferer’s hopes, not by accepting them. Once he has withdrawn, Altisidora recovers and assumes that he intends to sing. The women report the exchange to the Duchess, who joins the Duke and the two damsels in planning a harmless trick for the night. The episode thus makes the apparent courtship part of a larger performance designed to entertain the castle household at Don Quixote’s expense.

The Prank and Its Cost

During the night, bells and cats turn the staged wooing into a frightening assault. Don Quixote draws his sword, calls the disturbance the work of enchanters, and slashes at the cats as they run about his room. One cat clings to his face and wounds him before the Duke removes it. Don Quixote resists being separated from what he believes is an enemy, insisting on fighting the supposed demon himself. His interpretation again converts a contrived household prank into a chivalric contest; unlike the serenade, however, this misreading leaves him injured.

Altisidora binds the wounded parts of his face with her own hands. As she does so, she connects his injuries to his hardhearted refusal and wishes that Sancho Panza will forget to whip himself, so that Dulcinea may remain enchanted and Don Quixote will never reach her bed while Altisidora is alive. Don Quixote answers with deep sighs but does not return her affection. The Duke and Duchess recognize that their joke has caused more harm than they intended, and the injury confines him to bed for five days. Altisidora’s role therefore shifts from serenading pursuer to caretaker and commentator, without changing the central imbalance between her displayed desire and his unyielding devotion.

Dramatic Function of the Relationship

The episode sets the stock machinery of a romance against Don Quixote’s refusal to behave as its expected hero. A window, a garden, a harp, and a woman’s avowed suffering all invite the conventional response of reciprocal courtship. Don Quixote instead uses those same conventions to defend his fidelity to Dulcinea of Toboso. The audience knows that the scene is being arranged as a trick, while he accepts its romantic signs as sincere; that gap makes his earnestness part of the comedy without making his loyalty any less firm.

The relation also links verbal play to bodily consequence. At first Altisidora’s performed love troubles Don Quixote chiefly because he fears failing his vow. Later, the castle’s prank leaves his face wounded, and Altisidora’s hands tend the injuries while her words renew the rejected courtship. Even then, her care does not produce intimacy or reconciliation. The episode closes with Don Quixote still attached to Dulcinea and Altisidora still speaking as his disappointed admirer, while the five days of enforced rest register the cost of a joke that was meant to be harmless.