Sancho Panza’s supposed self-whipping to break Dulcinea del Toboso’s enchantment becomes a bargain, a staged sacrifice, and a test of Don Quixote’s faith. Don Quixote accepts Sancho’s suffering as the price of a cure, while Sancho converts the ordeal into a negotiable service: he expects payment, counts his losses, and ultimately directs most of the blows at trees rather than at himself. The scene advances the promised disenchantment while making its progress—and the suffering supposedly required for it—uncertain.

The bargain and its terms

After Don Quixote’s defeat, the two travelers set out for their village in sharply different moods. He is distressed by his loss but also pleased by what he takes to be proof of Sancho’s virtue: Sancho’s earlier suffering had helped bring about Altisidora’s return to life. Sancho, meanwhile, regrets that Altisidora did not give him the smocks she had promised. He compares his unpaid service to physicians who collect fees even when their work amounts only to signing a prescription, and resolves not to treat another patient without compensation. His complaint makes the penance a matter of practical reward as well as loyalty.

Don Quixote agrees that Altisidora treated Sancho badly and offers to pay him for the lashes intended to disenchant Dulcinea del Toboso. He hesitates over whether payment might interfere with the cure, but proposes that Sancho set a price and pay himself from money already belonging to him. Sancho readily accepts, explaining that his wife and children oblige him to appear grasping. The cure’s supposed value, in Don Quixote’s estimation, exceeds the treasures of Venice and the mines of Potosi; Sancho instead calculates the work as a payable sum. He says the required total is three thousand three hundred and odd lashes, notes that he has already given himself five, and sets the remaining three thousand three hundred at a quarter real each. His calculation comes to eight hundred and twenty-five reals, which he plans to deduct from his master’s funds.

The first night among the trees

Sancho agrees to begin that night, provided they stop in the open air. After the travelers have eaten from Sancho’s stores among trees beside the road, he makes a whip from Dapple’s halter and headstall and withdraws among beech trees. Don Quixote watches him go, warns him not to injure himself too severely, and undertakes to count every lash on his rosary. The count is meant to make the ritual measurable: each stroke advances a number on which both the promised payment and the hoped-for cure depend.

Sancho gives himself only six or eight blows before reconsidering the price. He calls the bargain unfair and insists that each lash should earn half a real rather than a quarter. Don Quixote doubles the rate, and Sancho resumes. But the apparent self-punishment soon becomes a deception: he strikes the trees instead of his shoulders, punctuating the blows with groans that persuade Don Quixote that he is suffering. The master counts and believes the number is already over a thousand. Moved by what he thinks is Sancho’s pain, and afraid that Sancho may kill himself before the task is complete, Don Quixote urges him to stop for the night. Sancho objects that they have paid too much to abandon the work, then agrees to continue only after Don Quixote permits him to do so.

The trick is visible in the stripped bark of several trees. Sancho strikes a beech with particular force and cries out that Samson is dying with everything else; Don Quixote rushes over and seizes the halter-whip. He tells Sancho that Dulcinea can wait, because Sancho’s life is needed by his wife and children. Sancho, sweating, asks his master to cover his shoulders with a cloak so he will not catch cold. Don Quixote gives him his own cloak, and Sancho sleeps until sunrise. The exchange turns the would-be cure into an act of care: the master stops the ritual not because he doubts its purpose, but because he fears its cost to the person on whom it depends.

A continuing penance, and a continuing deception

The task remains unfinished, and the next night provides another opportunity. After meeting Don Álvaro Tarfe, Don Quixote and Sancho part from him at a fork in the road. Don Quixote tells him about his defeat and Dulcinea’s enchantment; Tarfe departs astonished. The travelers stop among trees again so Sancho can continue. Once more Sancho protects his back while the beech trees bear the blows, and once more Don Quixote counts without detecting the deception. By morning the tally, combined with the previous night’s count, stands at three thousand and twenty-nine.

The number gives the performance the appearance of exact progress, although the reader has already been shown that the count does not reliably measure Sancho’s self-inflicted pain. Don Quixote remains convinced that the promised remedy is advancing. As they travel, he watches for Dulcinea, approaching every woman they meet in the belief that Merlin’s promise cannot fail. Sancho’s stratagem therefore serves two purposes at once: it preserves him from most of the punishment and sustains his master’s hope that the enchantment can be undone.

Completion and return

During the subsequent journey, Sancho finishes the task at night, though the account does not give a final count or establish that every counted lash struck his body. Don Quixote is overjoyed and waits for daylight, expecting to encounter Dulcinea restored to her former shape. Their return brings the penance’s accounting into a larger reckoning. Seeing their village, Sancho kneels and welcomes home the man who returns not rich but, in his own description, well whipped; he says that although Don Quixote has been defeated by another, he has conquered himself. Don Quixote redirects them toward home and the plans for their future pastoral life.

The episode holds bodily hardship, money, and belief in deliberate tension. Don Quixote treats Sancho’s counted lashes as a necessary remedy and a service worth extraordinary payment; Sancho treats them as labor whose rate can be renegotiated, and whose apparent completion can be managed by striking trees. Yet the deception does not simply cancel the bond between them. Don Quixote’s alarm leads him to stop the first session and cover Sancho with his cloak, while Sancho continues the agreed undertaking afterward. The cure remains bound to Don Quixote’s conviction, but the means of carrying it forward are shaped by Sancho’s calculation, resourcefulness, and attachment to his family.