The Andres incident turns one of Don Quixote’s supposed acts of justice into a failure measured by the person it was meant to help. When Andres meets the party again, his testimony corrects the knight’s confident version of an earlier intervention: the master had initially promised to release and pay the boy, but once Don Quixote departed, he punished him again and still did not pay. The encounter leaves Don Quixote chastened, Andres distrustful of knight-errant assistance, and the company confronted with the difference between issuing a command and securing its consequences.

The Earlier Intervention

The incident begins with an encounter in a wood, recalled by Don Quixote at the roadside spring. He says he heard cries and found Andres tied to an oak while his master punished him. When asked why he was doing so, the master presented the boy as a careless servant; Andres, according to Don Quixote’s account, said that the real issue was his demand for wages. Don Quixote took the boy’s side and ordered the master to release him and pay what he owed, adding a further promised payment. He also made the master swear to comply.

The knight treats this intervention as proof that the presence of an errant knight can correct the wrongs committed by powerful or abusive people. In recounting it, he presents the command and the master’s apparent submission as evidence that justice has been done. But the account contains a practical gap: Don Quixote left before seeing either the payment or the boy’s safety secured. His intervention had produced a promise, not an outcome, and his confidence in the promise sets up the reversal that follows.

Andres’s Testimony Reverses the Story

At the spring, Andres recognizes Don Quixote, runs to him, and weeps as he reminds the knight of the earlier encounter. Don Quixote welcomes him as a witness who can confirm the story and recounts the rescue before the assembled company. Andres confirms the facts of the intervention, but denies the conclusion Don Quixote has drawn from them. Once the knight had left and the two were alone, his master tied him again and punished him anew. The promised wages were not paid.

Andres says that the consequences lasted well beyond the encounter in the wood: he had been in a hospital recovering from what his master did after Don Quixote’s departure. He attributes the escalation to the master’s anger at being challenged. In Andres’s view, the knight’s intervention did not protect him; it made the master’s grievance more acute, and Andres bore the consequences because the master could not take them out on Don Quixote. His account therefore changes the scene from a simple rescue into a failed attempt at redress, with the intended beneficiary explaining the cost of the rescuer’s incomplete action.

A Promise Delayed, Immediate Help Offered

Don Quixote accepts that he should not have gone away before seeing Andres paid. He now proposes to find the master, punish him, and ensure payment down to the last maravedi. Dorothea reminds him that he has already promised to complete her undertaking before taking up another enterprise. Don Quixote acknowledges the obligation and postpones the pursuit, while renewing his promise that Andres will eventually receive justice. The intention to act remains, but the scene provides no evidence that the master is found or that the wages are recovered.

Andres openly doubts the value of another promise. Rather than ask for a future revenge, he says that immediate help toward reaching Seville would be more useful. Sancho gives him bread and cheese from his own store, recognizing that the company shares, in some measure, the boy’s misfortune. When Andres asks what Sancho’s share amounts to, Sancho points to the food and explains that squires also endure hunger and hardship. The gesture is modest, but it answers the need Andres has actually named: provisions for the road, rather than another declaration of what a knight may do later.

Departure and Narrative Significance

Andres takes the bread and cheese and sets off. Before leaving, he asks Don Quixote not to help him again if they meet, even if he appears to be in danger. His warning is grounded in the outcome he has just described: the previous intervention brought him a worse punishment instead of protection. Don Quixote rises as though to chastise him for the reproach, but Andres runs away too quickly for anyone to follow. Don Quixote is left deeply discomfited, while the others restrain their laughter so as not to embarrass him further.

The episode’s reversal depends on the difference between intention and consequence. Don Quixote’s first account makes the master’s sworn promise stand for a completed act of justice; Andres’s return supplies what that version omitted, including the renewed punishment, the unpaid wages, and the need for hospital care. The second promise cannot immediately repair the first failure, because Don Quixote’s prior undertaking with Dorothea limits what he may do next. Against the knight’s grand plan of punishment and repayment, Sancho’s small, immediate gift is the only aid Andres receives in the scene. His departure leaves the promised redress unresolved and gives the failed rescue its decisive judgment: Andres, not the would-be rescuer, has the clearest measure of what the intervention achieved.