On a cool morning Don Quixote left the inn after asking for the straightest road to Barcelona that did not touch Zaragoza. That was how badly he wanted to make that new historian a liar. For more than six days afterward, nothing happened worth putting in writing.
After those six days, night caught them in a wood off the road. The narrator writes that he does not know whether the trees were oaks or cork oaks. Cide Hamete, careful as he is about other things, did not set this one down precisely.
Sancho had eaten well that day and fell asleep as soon as he leaned against a trunk. Don Quixote could not close his eyes. The Cave of Montesinos came back to him, then Dulcinea as a peasant girl leaping onto her donkey, then the conditions Merlin had laid down. As far as he knew, Sancho had so far laid only five lashes on himself.