Proofs that the madness of Don Quixote is deliberate and not inevitable are to be found on every page. He is well aware of the transformation which real objects must undergo to be adapted to the comedy he is playing. He knows perfectly well, for instance, what sort of a person Dulcinea really is.[1] But he is not satisfied with the image of the gross, hard-working peasant girl whom he, in the refinement of his irony, has chosen to be the lady of his thought. He explains to Sancho that since there cannot be any perfect woman in the world, he has chosen the lowest of them all that he may the better prove the power of his deforming and reforming imagination: “I have fashioned her in my imagination as I would desire her to be.” When Sancho brings his report of his mission to the fair one, Don Quixote translates it phrase for phrase into his own language, for he knows that Sancho is describing the truth as he saw it. And later on, when the peasant girls appear on the road at dawn, and Sancho would have Don Quixote believe that they are Dulcinea and her maidens, Don Quixote refuses to accept the hallucination, for the reason that it is imposed upon him by another. He sees the women as they really are, and in order not to reveal his trickery, he has recourse to the old story of the enchanters who transform ob-
- ↑ “It is enough for me to think and to believe that she is beautiful and virtuous”: Part I, Chapter XXV.
