D

The following day Don Quixote did not rise from his bed, and he was
taken with a fever which kept him in bed for six days. All this time
his faithful Sancho remained at his bedside; and his friends, the
curate, the barber and the bachelor, visited him frequently. They all
did what they could, for they seemed to sense that the sickness was
brought on by the sad thought of his having been forced to give up his
great hope of reviving knight-errantry.

When the doctor was sent for, he said frankly that it was time for Don
Quixote to turn his thoughts to his soul; and when the niece and the
devoted housekeeper heard this, they began to weep bitterly. The
physician was of the same opinion as the curate and Don Quixote's
other friends: that melancholy and unhappiness were the cause of the
present state of his health.

Soon Don Quixote asked to be left alone, and then he fell into a long
sleep, which lasted over six hours. It provoked the anxiety of the two
women, who were afraid he would never wake up again. At last he
awoke, and as he opened his eyes he exclaimed in a voice of exaltation
and joy: "Blessed be the Lord Almighty, who has shown me such
goodness! In truth his mercies are boundless, and the sins of men can
neither limit them nor keep them back!"

The niece was struck by the unusual saneness of these words. She asked
Don Quixote gently what he meant, and what sins of men he was speaking
of. He replied in a voice full of calmness and serenity that God had
just freed his reason, for he realized now how ignorance in believing
in the absurdities of the books of chivalry had distorted his mind and
vision so sadly. He regretted, he said, that he saw the light so late
in life that there was no time for him to show his repentance by
reading other books, which might have helped his soul. Then he begged
his niece to send for the curate, the bachelor Carrasco, and the
barber, as he wished to confess his sins and make his will before he
departed from this earth.

The moment the three friends stepped over the threshold to his
chamber, he called out happily: "Good news for you, good sirs, that I
am no longer Don Quixote of La Mancha, but Alonso Quixano, whose way
of life won for him the name of the Good." And he went on to say how
he now loathed all books of chivalry which had brought him to the
state he was in, and how happy he was in the thought that God had made
him see his folly. The three men could only think that