This strange stillness, and the thoughts, always present to our knight's mind, of the incidents described at every turn in the books that were the cause of his misfortune, conjured up to his imagination as extraordinary a delusion as can well be conceived, which was that he fancied himself to have reached a famous castle (for, as has been said, all the inns he lodged in were castles to his eyes), and that the daughter of the innkeeper was daughter of the lord of the castle, and that she, won by his high-bred bearing, had fallen in love with him, and had promised to come to his bed for a while that night without the knowledge of her parents; and holding all this fantasy that he had constructed as solid fact, he began to feel uneasy and to consider the perilous risk which his virtue was about to encounter, and he resolved in his heart to commit no treason to his lady Dulcinea del Toboso, even though the queen Guinevere herself and the dame Quintanona should present themselves before him.
Esta maravillosa quietud, y los pensamientos que siempre nuestro caballero traía de los sucesos que a cada paso se cuentan en los libros autores de su desgracia, le trujo a la imaginación una de las estrañas locuras que buenamente imaginarse pueden. Y fue que él se imaginó haber llegado a un famoso castillo -que, como se ha dicho, castillos eran a su parecer todas las ventas donde alojaba-, y que la hija del ventero lo era del señor del castillo, la cual, vencida de su gentileza, se había enamorado dél y prometido que aquella noche, a furto de sus padres, vendría a yacer con él una buena pieza; y, teniendo toda esta quimera, que él se había fabricado, por firme y valedera, se comenzó a acuitar y a pensar en el peligroso trance en que su honestidad se había de ver, y propuso en su corazón de no cometer alevosía a su señora Dulcinea del Toboso, aunque la mesma reina Ginebra con su dama Quintañona se le pusiesen delante.