And although I do not intend to imitate Roland completely, in all his mad deeds and words and thoughts, yet I will copy as best I can all that seems to me most essential.
And he concludes with the definite statement of his clear resolution:
Mad I am and mad I must be until thou shalt return with the reply. … If the reply be kindly, I shall cease playing the madman. If it be unkind, I shall go mad in very truth, and thus I shall suffer no consciousness of my pain.
One could not ask a more explicit revelation of Don Quixote’s secret. He knows that he is not mad, but he wishes to behave as if he were, and his mad exploits are to be merely in imitation of the exploits of famous madmen. The method which he confesses in this one case of deliberate madness superposed upon his primary madness is the very method which he follows in all the other cases in which he does not confess.
In this same passage is to be found his theory—one of the profoundest in the book—as to going mad without cause or reason. On Sancho’s asking him why he undertakes so hard a penance when Dulcinea has given him no cause, Don Quixote answers:
There lies the point and the very excellence of my intent. For the knight-errant who goes mad for just cause deserves no thanks; but to go mad without just cause is notable indeed.
