Clavileño’s Flight and the Disenchantment of the Distressed Duenna is a staged adventure in which a wooden horse, a false aerial journey, and a planted announcement make the Duke and Duchess’s practical joke look like a knightly triumph. Don Quixote accepts the ride as a chance to complete a rescue; Sancho resists it, then joins him. The horse’s explosion returns both men to the garden, where an inscription declares the Distressed Duenna’s affair settled while pointing toward the continuing demand for Sancho’s self-flagellation to disenchant Dulcinea.

The promised adventure

The episode concludes the protracted adventure of the Distressed Duenna. Her appeal has moved Sancho, who has resolved to accompany his master to the ends of the earth if that is what the removal of the duennas’ beards requires. By nightfall, the appointed hour for Malambruno’s promised horse has arrived. Don Quixote, unsettled by the delay, has begun to wonder whether the adventure is meant for another knight or whether Malambruno is afraid to face him. The sudden appearance of the machine answers his doubts in the form he expects: four wild-looking bearers, clad in green ivy, carry a large wooden horse into the garden and set it on its feet.

The bearers announce that a knight with courage should mount, while his squire should sit behind him and trust Malambruno. The horse is supposedly controlled by a peg in its neck; turning it will carry the riders through the air to Malambruno. They are told to cover their eyes against the height and to wait for the horse’s neigh as the sign that their journey is over. These instructions lend a mechanical procedure to an impossible flight, giving the trick the appearance of an adventure with rules and a destination. The bearers then withdraw, leaving the horse and its invitation behind.

Don Quixote and Sancho take their seats

The Distressed Duenna treats the horse’s arrival as confirmation that Malambruno has kept his promise. She urges Don Quixote to mount with his squire, assuring them that the beards are growing and that the afflicted women depend on their journey. Don Quixote agrees immediately, eager to finish the exploit without pausing for a cushion or spurs. Sancho refuses at first: he is neither a knight nor willing to travel through the air. He worries about what the people of his island will think of their governor roaming the winds, and about the distance to Kandy if the horse tires or Malambruno becomes angry. His objections turn the supposed marvel into a practical calculation of risk, travel time, and political embarrassment.

Sancho’s reluctance does not undo the arrangement. The adventure proceeds with the two men on Clavileño, their eyes covered as the instructions require. In their conversation, Don Quixote describes their supposed passage through the air and imagines they are descending toward the kingdom of Kandy. Sancho answers from the bodily discomfort of the horse’s croup, comparing it unfavorably with the mount used by Magallanes or Magalona. Their contrasting accounts sustain the scene’s double perspective: Don Quixote gives the ride the scale and purpose of a romance, while Sancho measures it by the discomfort of sitting behind him.

The explosion and the parchment

The Duke and Duchess, with the other people in the garden, listen to the riders’ conversation and are greatly amused. To bring the adventure to its planned end, they apply a light to Clavileño’s tail. The horse, packed with squibs and crackers, explodes with a great noise and throws Don Quixote and Sancho to the ground, half singed. The revelation of the mechanism makes the theatrical construction of the flight unmistakable: the riders have not been carried to Malambruno but have remained in the garden, where their hosts control both the apparent departure and its abrupt conclusion.

When the two men get up, shaken, they are astonished to find themselves where they started, among people lying on the ground as if unconscious. A tall lance stands in the garden with a parchment suspended from it by green silk cords. Its gold lettering declares that Don Quixote has completed the Countess Trifaldi’s adventure merely by attempting it: Malambruno is satisfied, the duennas’ chins are smooth, and Don Clavijo and Princess Antonomasia have returned to their former forms. But the message also adds a condition beyond this apparent victory: Dulcinea will be freed only when the squirely flagellation is complete. The announcement thus closes one staged trial while preserving another as an obligation.

The joke’s aftermath and narrative effect

Don Quixote reads the parchment as proof that the adventure has succeeded and gives thanks for restoring the duennas’ faces without greater danger. He reassures the Duke, who is only slowly recovering from his apparent swoon, that the affair is over. The Duke then embraces Don Quixote and praises him as the greatest knight of any age. Sancho, meanwhile, looks for the Distressed Duenna, hoping to see her face without its beard; he is told that she and the other duennas vanished when the horse descended in flames and are already smooth-faced. The staged disappearance prevents him from verifying the promised transformation for himself.

The others do not press Sancho for a further account of his journey, since he seems ready to describe everything in heaven despite never having left the garden. The episode gives the Duke and Duchess lasting amusement and leaves Sancho with a story he may tell for years. Don Quixote, however, turns the exchange into a pointed comparison: because Sancho expects him to believe what he claims to have seen in heaven, he should likewise accept Don Quixote’s account of the Cave of Montesinos. The ending joins the prank’s competing claims about belief. The hosts know how the flight was manufactured; Sancho’s report is treated as comic invention, yet Don Quixote invokes it to defend his own extraordinary testimony. The parchment’s apparent resolution, meanwhile, ties the spectacle back to Dulcinea’s enchantment and keeps the larger chain of staged trials in motion.