At this point in the curate's reading, Sancho rushes in. "Help, help!" he yells, "My master is fighting with the giant, that foe of Princess Micomicona." The innkeeper and the rest discover Don Quixote in his room, wearing only a shirt and nightcap. Fast asleep, he has hacked the wineskins to pieces, considering them in his fevered dreams to be parts of a conquered giant. Don Quixote is put back to bed while the landlord rages over his spilled wine. The curate reads on.
Eventually the indiscretion of Leonela shatters the paradise in which illusive state Anselmo and Camilla and Lothario frolic. Anselmo goes one night to investigate a noise coming from the maid's room. At his entry, a strange man leaps from the window and runs off. Leonela promises her angry master that she will explain everything if he waits until morning, and Anselmo complies. Camilla, hearing of the incident and fearing that the maid will disclose everything, hastens to Lothario and begs him to find a haven for her. After conveying Camilla to a nunnery, Lothario enlists in the army. Meanwhile, Anselmo, rising at dawn, discovers that Leonela has fled. After finding his wife and best friend gone as well, he unhappily leaves his home, and from the gossip of a passing townsman learns the whole truth of his cuckolding. So melancholy does he become that Anselmo prepares himself for death. His last words are in writing: "a foolish and ill-advised curiosity has robbed me of my life." Lothario is slain in battle soon afterward, and Camilla dies a few months later.
