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“By my faith as a knight errant,” responded Don Quixote, “as soon as I saw this wagon I imagined that a great adventure was awaiting me, and now I say that it is necessary to touch appearances with one’s hand to avoid being deceived. Go with God, my good people, and have your festival, and consider if there is any way in which I can be of service to you, and I shall do it gladly and willingly, because ever since I was a boy I have enjoyed the theater, and in my youth I was a great lover of plays.”

As luck would have it, while they were having this conversation a member of the company came up to them, and he was dressed as a fool, wearing a good number of bells, and at the end of a stick he was carrying there were three inflated cow bladders; this buffoon approached Don Quixote and began to fence with the stick and hit the ground with the bladders and leap high into the air, shaking his bells; this terrible sight so alarmed Rocinante that, without Don Quixote being able to stop him, he took the bit between his teeth and began to run across the field with more speed than was ever promised by the bones of his anatomy. Sancho, who considered the danger that Don Quixote would be thrown, jumped off his donkey and ran as fast as he could to help him, but when he reached him Don Quixote was already on the ground, and next to him lay Rocinante, who had fallen along with his master: the usual finale and conclusion of Rocinante’s exuberance and bold exploits.

But as soon as Sancho had left his mount to assist Don Quixote, the demon dancer jumped on the donkey and began to hit him with the bladders, and fear and the noise, more than the pain of the blows, made the donkey fly across the countryside to the town where the festival was to be held. Sancho looked at his racing donkey and his fallen master and did not know which of the two problems he should take care of first; but, in fact, because he was a good squire and a good servant, love for his master won out over affection for his donkey, although each time he saw the bladders go up in the air and come down on his donkey’s rump, he suffered the torments and terrors of death and would rather have had those blows fall on his own eyes than touch a hair of his donkey’s tail. In this perplexity and tribulation, he reached Don Quixote, who was much more bruised and battered than he would have wished, and helping him to mount Rocinate, he said:

“Señor, the devil has made off with my donkey.”

“What devil?” asked Don Quixote.

“The one with the bladders,” responded Sancho.

“Then I shall get him back,” replied Don Quixote, “even if he takes him down to the deepest and darkest pits of hell. Follow me, Sancho, for the cart is traveling slowly, and I shall compensate for the loss of the donkey with the mules.”

“There’s no need to go to all that trouble, Señor,” responded Sancho. “Your grace should calm your anger, for it seems to me the devil has left the donkey and gone back to his lair.”

And this was true, because after the devil had fallen off the donkey in imitation of Don Quixote and Rocinante, the devil went on foot to the town, and the donkey returned to his master.

“Even so,” said Don Quixote, “it would be a good idea to punish the discourtesy of that demon by chastising someone in the cart, even the Emperor himself.”

“Your grace should put that thought out of your mind,” replied Sancho, “and take my advice, which is never to interfere with actors, for they are favored people. I have seen an actor arrested for two deaths and then be released, and no fines. Your grace should know that since they are good-natured and give pleasure to people, everyone favors them, everyone protects and helps and admires them, especially if they’re in one of the royal companies with an official license, and all of them, or most of them, look like princes in their costumes and makeup.”

“Well, all the same,” responded Don Quixote, “the actor demon is not going to exit to applause, even if the entire human race should favor him.”

And saying this,