Now that Don Quixote is about to die, Sancho is at the top of his madness. Imploring his master to rise and go forth again as a knight-errant, Sancho expresses his quixotism: to deny death, deny sanity, and once more serve Dulcinea who grants immortality. But he cannot revitalize Don Quixote's disillusioned faith, and he, Sancho, is left as heir to quixotism.
The author's address to his pen underlines again Cervantes' fancy of calling his created characters his "stepchildren." The greatness of Don Quixote has been nowhere manifested in his earlier works, and it is not hard to imagine that Cervantes believed himself to be merely the incidental medium of some creative spirit that fathered the visionary knight. "I alone," writes Cervantes, was born for Don Quixote, and, he should add, his spirit transcends my art.
