Cide Hamete Benengeli opens the eighth chapter by praising Allah, three times over. It is because Don Quixote and Sancho are out in the fields again.
He asks his readers to forget the adventures that came before. The real deeds and laughter, he says, begin now on the road to El Toboso, just as the earlier ones began on the plain of Montiel.
As soon as Sansón had turned back, Rocinante neighed and the donkey sighed. The two of them took it for a good omen. The narrator notes that the donkey’s sighs outnumbered the horse’s neighs. From that, Sancho guessed that his luck would outrun his master’s.