Don Quixote’s penance in the Sierra Morena turns an imagined romantic crisis into a deliberate performance of knightly devotion. Although Dulcinea del Toboso has neither rejected him nor been shown to betray him, he chooses to imitate the legendary Amadis of Gaul, making absence itself the cause of a trial whose end depends on the message Sancho Panza carries to her. The episode shifts between grand declarations and practical details: a secluded mountain retreat becomes a stage for lament, while a strip of shirt tied into a rosary serves as the instrument of private devotion.

A Chosen Model of Penance

Don Quixote explains that he intends to follow Amadis, whom he regards as the foremost exemplar of knight-errantry. As painters study celebrated predecessors and exemplary figures offer models for later generations, he argues, a knight should imitate the best of his kind. Amadis’s retreat to Pena Pobre, after Oriana rejected him, seems a more attainable model than the feats of defeating giants, dragons, or armies. Don Quixote therefore resolves to adopt the name Beltenebros’s story made famous and to reproduce its lover’s sorrow in the Sierra Morena.

He also weighs a second precedent: Roland’s furious madness after learning that Angelica had been with Medoro. Don Quixote distinguishes Roland’s destructive grief from the more restrained sorrow he associates with Amadis. His choice is not simply between two famous forms of madness; it is between imitating violent excess and enacting sorrow through prayer, tears, and lament. Later, alone, he returns to the comparison. Because Roland’s madness followed evidence of betrayal, and because he insists that Dulcinea has never seen a Moor in his proper costume, that model would falsely imply an offense against her. Amadis’s grief, by contrast, can be imitated without accusing Dulcinea of wrongdoing.

The Cause and Terms of His Trial

Sancho challenges the premise of the penance: the legendary lovers had provocation, but Don Quixote has no evidence that Dulcinea has rejected or betrayed him. Don Quixote treats that absence of cause as the point. To go mad when wronged would be ordinary; to do so without provocation, he says, demonstrates the exceptional force of his devotion. He identifies their long separation as sufficient cause for sorrow and connects the penance to the letter he intends Sancho to deliver.

The imagined outcome is conditional. If Dulcinea’s reply matches his constancy, his madness and penance will end; if it does not, he expects to become genuinely mad and thus cease to feel the pain of the answer. Either response, in his reasoning, will release him from suspense. The undertaking is therefore not merely a display in the wilderness: it is tied to a message, a hoped-for judgment from Dulcinea, and Sancho’s return. Don Quixote asks Sancho to remember what he sees so that the absent lady can hear an account of his devotion.

The Retreat and Its Rituals

Don Quixote selects a high, isolated mountain beside a brook, with a meadow, trees, shrubs, and flowers around it. He addresses the landscape as a witness to his grief, imagining his tears swelling the stream and his sighs moving the leaves. His appeal to the local natural powers and the trees turns the lonely place into an audience for a complaint directed chiefly toward Dulcinea. He then dismounts Rocinante, removes the saddle and bridle, and releases the horse with a ceremonious gesture. Sancho, by contrast, remarks on Dapple and worries about how he will make the journey without him, bringing the practical business of travel into the middle of the knight’s elevated scene.

After Sancho leaves, Don Quixote performs somersaults, partly undressed, and considers once more whether to imitate Roland’s violent behavior or Amadis’s melancholy retreat. He settles on the latter. Rather than harm the trees or disturb the water, he turns to prayer and improvises a rosary by tearing a strip from his shirt and tying eleven knots, one larger than the others. He repeats ave-marias and regrets having no hermit present to hear his confession and console him. In the absence of that imagined companion, he paces the meadow and writes or carves verses on tree bark and sand. The surviving lines, centered on his tears, solitude, and distant Dulcinea, make written lament the record left by his enacted penance.

Sancho’s Departure and the Episode’s Irony

Before leaving, Sancho asks Don Quixote to take care not to injure himself while striking his head against the rocks. Since the performance is feigned, Sancho proposes that he could report a more impressive account than the actual events. Don Quixote refuses: in his understanding of chivalric rules, substituting one deed for another would amount to a lie, so the blows must be real. He asks for lint to dress any wounds, noting that the balsam they lost is unavailable. Sancho answers that losing the ass was worse because the lint went with it, and he urges Don Quixote to write the letter and send him away.

Their different interpretations sharpen the episode’s comic tension. Don Quixote calls his solitude worse than hell; Sancho responds with a learned phrase about there being no return from hell. Yet Sancho also promises to tell Dulcinea the astonishing things he has witnessed and is eager to return to rescue his master from this purgatory. The penance is at once an idealized imitation, a staged message to an absent lady, and a set of real actions that Sancho must observe and report. Its central contradiction is deliberate: Don Quixote knows there is no proven rejection, but makes his fidelity visible by behaving as if separation alone warrants a legendary lover’s ordeal.