The Knight of the Sorrowful face is again free, and so am I. Away from the confinement of privilege, and the pranks of the Duke and Duchess, he can do what he does best: devise his own jokes upon himself. But oh, how I wept with joy at chapter LIX, where Don Quixote’s greatest adversary is revealed: the author of the false Quixote (it’s true, there were at least two tears in my eyes when I read this most meta of moments—You may say two tears do not make a weeping, but how my heart sang when I read this!).

It is a welcome change after the previous section. It’s curious how both volumes reach a kind of plateau in their second acts. The narratives start to belong to others. In the first, it’s a volume of writing found by the curate, and in the second it’s to the cursed Duke and Duchess. It is when the story is in the hands of our knight that it blossoms, that the full potential of Quixote’s questionable madness can take us into new and uncharted realms of brilliance.

Yes, it’s the Knight of the Sorrowful face who guides us. But does someone guide him? Quixote is a chivalric knight who serves his lady and his god, but just as his lady is a projection of his delusions, the same could be said for his god. I believe it’s Bloom who points out that while Quixote professes faith, he is ultimately drawn by his own whims. His god is in his universe, as real to him as the pasteboard Moors in the Master Pedro’s puppet show. Is there a god over Don Quixote? There is certainly providence in this universe (we, today, could not stand the narrative conceits that bring together the far flung lovers in the first Volume, but such is the concept of providence in the 17th century). But a god? For the historian, of course, there is. And the name of that god is Muhammad. But how little his hand seems to be in play in this most important history.