The encounter between Don Quixote of La Mancha and the Knight of the Mirrors turns a disputed story of victory into a formal challenge. The Knight claims that he has already defeated Don Quixote and made him admit that Casildea de Vandalia is more beautiful than Dulcinea del Toboso. Don Quixote rejects the account as doubtful, but rather than let the claim stand, proposes that they settle their disagreement in combat. Their pact makes the next morning’s duel a test not only of arms but of whose account of reality will prevail.

The Knight’s account and claim to glory

The Knight explains his travels as the consequence of his love for Casildea de Vandalia. He calls her peerless in stature, rank, and beauty, and says that she has repeatedly sent him into danger while promising that the next task will bring his hopes closer to fulfilment. Instead, the trials have accumulated without end, and her commands remain as urgent as ever. His account presents him as a knight whose devotion is measured by a growing catalogue of deeds—and by the continuing distance between those deeds and the reward he seeks.

Among the tasks he recounts are stopping the movement of La Giralda in Seville, lifting the ancient bulls of Guisando, and plunging into the cavern of Cabra to report on its hidden depths. He claims to have completed them all. Casildea’s latest order, he says, is to travel through the provinces of Spain and make every wandering knight confess that she surpasses all living women in beauty and that he is the world’s most valiant and deeply enamoured knight. In pursuit of that demand, he says, he has already defeated several knights who disputed it.

The claimed defeat of Don Quixote is the crown of this boast. The Knight argues that the fame of a defeated opponent passes to the victor: since Don Quixote has supposedly vanquished every other knight, defeating him would transfer that accumulated honour as well. The argument converts a single alleged victory into a claim to universal renown. Don Quixote is astonished and nearly accuses him outright of lying, but restrains himself, hoping instead that the Knight will expose the falsehood himself.

Disputed identity and the explanation of enchantment

Don Quixote initially answers with measured scepticism. He does not dispute the Knight’s broader claims about his victories; he doubts that this particular opponent could have defeated him. Perhaps, he suggests, the Knight fought someone who merely resembled him, since few men resemble Don Quixote. The Knight answers with a detailed identification: the tall, lean figure with greying hair, hooked nose, drooping black moustaches, the peasant squire Sancho Panza, the horse Rocinante, and the lady Dulcinea del Toboso. He even connects Dulcinea’s name with Aldonza Lorenzo, just as he connects Casildea with Casilda of Andalusia.

Those particulars make the Knight’s account harder to dismiss as a mistake. Don Quixote therefore changes the terms of his response without conceding the alleged defeat. He describes Don Quixote as his closest friend, so closely identified with himself that he regards him almost as his own person, and says the Knight’s description appears to point to the very man he means. Yet what he sees and feels tells him that the same man cannot have been vanquished. He resolves the contradiction through the enchanters who, in his account, persecute Don Quixote: one may have assumed his shape in order to be defeated and steal the fame earned by his achievements.

Don Quixote adds a recent example to support this explanation. Only ten hours earlier, he says, hostile enchanters transformed the fair Dulcinea del Toboso into a foul village girl; they may likewise have altered Don Quixote’s appearance. He then presents himself as the man who will answer the Knight’s claim in arms, on foot or horseback. His appeal to enchantment preserves his belief in Don Quixote’s honour while allowing him to acknowledge how closely the Knight’s description fits. The disagreement is thus not simply over whether a duel occurred: the two men assign opposite meanings to the same apparent evidence.

The pact and the preparation for combat

Don Quixote stands and lays his hand on his sword. The Knight replies calmly that the man who has once defeated him while he was transformed may reasonably hope to defeat him in his proper form. He will not, however, fight in darkness, which he associates with highwaymen and bullies. They must wait for daylight, so the sun can witness their deeds. Their agreed condition is that the defeated knight will be at the victor’s disposal, provided the victor’s commands remain consistent with knightly conduct. Don Quixote accepts the terms without reservation.

The two knights then go to rouse their squires, who have fallen asleep and remain in the same positions in which sleep overtook them. They are told to prepare the horses for a bloody and arduous single combat at sunrise. Sancho Panza is aghast at the prospect, frightened by the mighty deeds the other squire has attributed to his master. The preparation briefly widens the contest beyond the knights: the Knight of the Mirrors tells Sancho that Andalusian fighting men serving as godfathers in a quarrel do not stand idle while their principals fight, but join in combat themselves. The two squires go to find the animals; by then, the three horses and the ass have gathered together.

The mirrored challenge

As the combat approaches, Don Quixote studies the Knight of the Mirrors’ equipment. The other knight wears armour beneath a surcoat of fine-looking gold cloth, studded with bright mirrors like small moons. Green, yellow, and white plumes rise above his helmet, and a long, stout lance rests against a tree. The display gives him a splendid appearance and, to Don Quixote, suggests great strength. Sancho, by contrast, trembles at the sight of the Knight’s squire, whose grotesque, wart-covered nose hangs below his mouth; he privately prefers the prospect of two hundred blows to fighting that figure himself.

Before mounting, Don Quixote courteously asks the Knight to raise his visor so he can see whether his face matches his finery. The Knight refuses to delay for this, saying that Don Quixote will have ample time to see him after victory or defeat. When Don Quixote asks again whether he is the same man the Knight claims to have vanquished, the answer remains guarded: he is as like that knight as one egg is like another, but the Knight cannot be certain in the face of Don Quixote’s own account of enchantment. That qualification leaves the central question unresolved. Don Quixote takes it as proof that the Knight is mistaken and insists that the combat will settle the matter: once their horses are brought, he expects to reveal the Knight’s face and show that he is not the defeated man the Knight imagines. The encounter ends with the pact in force and the identities still contested; the promised duel, rather than the arguments, must decide what follows.