While Sancho was relating his blood-curdling story, a tremendous noise and loud exclamations poured forth from the garret, and the innkeeper, suddenly remembering all the many wine-skins he had hung up there on the previous night sprang out of his chair and toward the scene of action, followed by the rest.
The worst that the innkeeper might have feared was true; for there, on the garret floor, was a sea of red wine, with hosts of empty skins floating about upon it. In the middle of the sea stood Don Quixote, sword in hand, slashing right and left, dressed in nothing but his shirt. But the strangest thing of all was not his attire, but the fact that he was fast asleep, his eyes shut tightly, dreaming that he had already arrived in the distant realm of the Princess Micomicona and had encountered the giant enemy.
Seeing all his precious wine floating away, the innkeeper became enraged and set upon Don Quixote with his bare fists; but the beating had no effect on the knight except, perhaps, that it made him sleep more soundly. It was not until the barber had drenched him in cold water that he came to his senses.
The Princess Micomicona, who had been listening to the saving of her kingdom outside the door, became eager, after she had heard the tempest subside, to enter and see the conquered giant; but she retired hastily and with a slight exclamation of horrified modesty on seeing the abbreviated length of her defender's night-shirt, the tail of which had been sacrificed to his prayers in the wilderness.
The landlord, cursing his luck, swore that this time the knight errant and his squire should not escape without paying. But Don Quixote, whose hand the curate was holding in an endeavor to calm him, merely fell on his knees before the curate, exclaiming: "Exalted and beautiful Princess! Your Highness may now live in peace; for I have slain the giant!" He imagined that he was at the feet of Micomicona. Soon after having spoken thus, he showed signs of great weariness, and the curate, the barber and Cardenio carried him to his bed, where he fell asleep.
Next they had to console Sancho, who was grief-stricken because he had been unable to find the giant's head. He swore he had seen it falling when his master cut it off, and imagined that if it could not be produced there would be no reward for either him or his master; but Dorothea, in her rôle of Princess, calmed and comforted him.