The thoughts that had crowded Don Quixote before his fall crowded him even more after it. As he sat in the shade of the tree, they swarmed and stung him like flies drawn to honey. Some went to freeing Dulcinea from her enchantment, others to how he would live through the year of retirement forced on him.
When Sancho came up praising Tosilos for his generosity, Don Quixote asked whether he still believed the man was a real lackey. Sancho said he did not see what whipping his own backside had to do with freeing enchanted people. It was like telling someone with a headache to rub ointment on his knees, he said. Still, he would whip himself when he felt like it and the time was right.
Talking like this, they came to the very meadow where the bulls had trampled them. It was the place where, in chapter 36, the people of a rich village had dressed as shepherds and played at a pretend Arcadia. There Don Quixote brought out a new idea. During the year he had to spend in retirement, let the two of them live as shepherds.