The custom of knights-errant paying no lodging or food costs

The custom of knights-errant paying no lodging or food costs is a claimed privilege that lets Don Quixote treat ordinary inn charges as inapplicable to his chivalric vocation. At the inn, that belief collides with the innkeeper’s insistence that adventure does not excuse an unpaid bill or damage to his property.

The Claimed Privilege

The innkeeper recalls that on an earlier visit Don Quixote left without paying for supper, beds, straw, and barley for himself, Sancho Panza, a hack, and an ass. Don Quixote had justified the departure by claiming that, as a knight-errant, he was not bound to pay under the supposed tariff of knight-errantry. The episode establishes the custom as a rule Don Quixote invokes, rather than a privilege the innkeeper accepts.

A Privilege Put to the Test

After Don Quixote mistakes damaged wine-skins for a giant and spills their contents, the innkeeper declares that the chivalric privilege will not release either the knight or his squire from payment this time. The immediate dispute makes the rule concrete: the innkeeper demands compensation not only for the lost wine but also for the cost of repairing the skins. The landlady’s complaint recalls further costs from the earlier visit, including unpaid provisions and damage to a tail kept for her husband’s use.

Consequences at the Inn

The curate promises to make good the inn’s losses, including the wine, the skins, and the diminished value of the tail. That intervention calms the dispute, but it does not confirm Don Quixote’s claimed exemption; instead, the inn’s material costs are addressed through compensation. The contrast between chivalric entitlement and the innkeeper’s account of food, lodging, animals, and repairs makes the custom a recurring source of friction between Don Quixote’s imagined code and ordinary obligations.