The curate and the barber’s rescue plan turns Don Quixote’s chivalric convictions into the means of bringing him home. When Sancho Panza encounters them on the road, he is returning from his master’s mountain retreat with news of Don Quixote’s penance and a mission to Dulcinea del Toboso. The two men answer his secrecy not with force but with a performance designed to make a request for help irresistible to a knight-errant. The scheme begins at an inn and proceeds toward the Sierra Morena, where Sancho’s account gives the rescuers both their destination and the fiction they will need to carry him away.

The Encounter at the Inn

Sancho reaches the inn where he had earlier been tossed in a blanket. Hungry after many days of cold fare, he longs for something hot, but the memory of the place holds him back from entering. The curate and the barber come out and recognize him, as well as Rocinante. They know Sancho has gone off with his master, and they are eager to find out where Don Quixote is. Their concern follows their earlier examination of Don Quixote’s books: they already know of his madness, but hearing of it again through Sancho’s account renews their astonishment.

Sancho tries to keep his master’s location and circumstances secret, saying only that Don Quixote is occupied with an important matter. The barber suspects a crime because Sancho is riding the master’s horse and threatens consequences unless he produces Don Quixote. Sancho rejects the accusation, then explains that his master is doing penance in the mountains and that he himself has been sent to Dulcinea with a letter. The account converts a guarded encounter into a practical opportunity: the curate and barber now know where to look and what hope may persuade Don Quixote to leave.

The letter, however, is not available. Sancho believes it is in a notebook that Don Quixote gave him to have copied, but when he searches for it, he realizes the notebook never left his master’s possession. In distress, Sancho pulls at his beard and strikes his own face. His reaction exposes a flaw in the mission on which the rescue plan depends: he cannot truthfully report that Dulcinea has received the letter. Rather than abandon the plan, the curate and barber decide to supply him with a story that will serve its purpose.

Turning Penance into a Rescue Mission

The curate proposes that they coax Don Quixote away from his useless penance by presenting him with a new case of distress. He will appear as a wandering damsel whose wrong must be righted by a valiant knight, while the barber will accompany him as a squire. The supposed damsel will ask Don Quixote to travel with her to redress an injury inflicted by a wicked knight, and will forbid questions about her identity and circumstances until the task is complete. The request is shaped to meet Don Quixote inside his own imagined code: an aggrieved damsel asking for aid is a summons he will find difficult to refuse.

Sancho is not merely a guide to the mountains but a collaborator in the deception. The rescuers instruct him to say that he delivered the letter and that Dulcinea, unable to read, answered orally. In this invented message, she commands Don Quixote to come see her at once, on pain of her displeasure. The false reply supplies a personal reason for leaving the mountains, while the curate’s staged appeal supplies a public, knightly one. Together they expect these inducements to draw Don Quixote back toward ordinary life and, as they hope, toward his ambition to become an emperor or monarch rather than an archbishop. Sancho approves of the imperial prospect because he expects an emperor to be better able to reward a squire.

Disguise and Improvisation

At the inn, the curate and barber put the scheme into practice. They borrow a petticoat and hood from the landlady, leaving the curate’s new cassock as security, and the barber fashions a beard from the red-brown tail of an ox. The innkeeper and landlady recognize the intended target as their former guest, the balsam-maker and master of the squire who had been tossed in a blanket. They tell the curate what happened at the inn, adding details Sancho had kept from him.

The curate first dresses as the distressed woman, in a petticoat and bodice supplied by the landlady, but soon objects that this costume is indecorous for a priest. He insists that the barber should take the damsel’s part and that he should become the squire. The change is a small reversal, yet it shows how improvised the rescue is: the plan must accommodate the curate’s sense of clerical dignity even while relying on theatrical disguise. Sancho sees the pair in costume and cannot suppress his laughter. The barber says he can perform the role without further instruction, and they set out with Sancho as their guide.

Maritornes promises to pray for the success of what she regards as a difficult and Christian undertaking. The curate and barber then leave the inn, carrying borrowed clothes and a fabricated identity toward a rescue that depends on persuading Don Quixote, not confronting him. Their disguises are practical instruments, but also a mirror of the knight’s own habit of remaking ordinary circumstances into chivalric adventure.

The Approach to the Sierra Morena

The next day, Sancho recognizes the broom branches he had placed as markers to find his way back to Don Quixote. The rescuers tell him to dress them when they reach the place, and warn him not to reveal who they are or that he knows them. They also rehearse the invented message from Dulcinea, confident that it will help bring Don Quixote away from the penance he has chosen. Sancho offers to go ahead and deliver the message himself, hoping it may save them the trouble of carrying out the whole disguise. They accept his proposal and wait for his return.

While Sancho goes into the mountain glens, the curate and barber rest beside a small stream. It is an intensely hot August afternoon, and the shade of rocks and trees makes the place a comfortable waiting point. There they hear a clear, unaccompanied voice singing verses that sound like the work of educated city poets rather than rustic shepherds. The episode leaves the rescue attempt poised between preparation and encounter: Sancho has the false message, the rescuers have their roles, and the route to Don Quixote is marked, but the evidence here stops before the disguised appeal is made. The plan’s decisive ingenuity lies in that unfinished approach—its makers seek to restore Don Quixote not by disproving his world, but by entering it and redirecting its demands.