The curate convinces the troopers that they cannot detain a madman. They should rather allow himself and the barber to conduct Don Quixote back to his village where he might be cured, accompanied by a couple of the police officers. Meanwhile, the separate members of the inn's company prepare to leave, happy at the new prospects that the reunions and chance meetings have revealed. The curate pays the barber for the basin, the dispute of the packsaddle being settled; he compensates the innkeeper for the loss of his wineskins and the wine, and hires a wagon to convey Don Quixote in an oxcart. Constructing a kind of cage with wooden bars and a straw floor, the curate and the barber quietly convey the sleeping knight to this vehicle, which is then placed on the oxcart. The Don is too amazed to resist or cry out. In a disguised voice, the barber explains that the "Manchegan lion," the flower of knight-errantry, is now to be conveyed to La Mancha, where he will unite with the "Tobosan dove" and produce brave cubs after the knight's own image.
Don Quixote wonders at his enchantment, for knights-errant, he says, are usually swiftly carried in a sky chariot or on the back of a flying beast. At one point in the slow journey, they are overtaken by horsemen heading for a nearby inn. The newcomers, a group of clergymen, wonder at the strange manner of conveying a prisoner of the Holy Brotherhood, and the canon listens attentively as the curate relates the strange history of Don Quixote and his madness. The canon responds by discoursing on the evils of reading books of romances, for, he says, they neither instruct nor provide their readers with a sense of beauty. For all that, he continues, they have one grace, for they are unlimited vehicles for an author to try his skill at depicting various imaginative happenings and fantastic characters.
