However, the madman to whom Cervantes introduces us seems on the whole at first to be consistent. A poverty-struck Manchegan, finding his treeless world too empty for his senses, lets them roam in a realm of knight-errants, ogres, fairies, virgins, Magic. Until his senses are strayed. Whereupon, deeming himself a Roland or an Amadis, he buckles on his rusty sword, takes his nag from the stall and sallies forth into a Spain sordidly realistic, sick of heroes, to perform adventures. He cuts a ridiculous figure. And his fate is what a sane man might expect. He is unhorsed, drubbed, pounded. He loses teeth as his molested countrymen lose tempers. The ladies he meets are foul-breathed wenches; the lord of the Castle in which he takes his rest wants his pay, being the keeper of an inn. His battles are with goats, sheep, windmills and Biscayan servants. It is clear that some day his madness will discomfit him entire. At which time he will be forced back to his house where the good Nurse and the niece will staunch his wounds, bathe the dust from his mad eyes and put him to bed. Meantime, there is the tale to tell--with much laughter--of his absurd adventures. Cervantes wishes to laugh at this medieval scarecrow, jousting with the Modern. His fellow Spaniards, sick like himself of gestures and heroics, will roar along--will pay _reales_ for the book--will put money in the purse of a scribbler. Such a Quixote is the child of Cervantes, and is the subject of the early chapters. And now a fundamental difference sets in, marking off this character from others. Most literary creations remain their maker’s. As he willed, modeled, developed them, so they live--or die. This is true in great books. The evolution of the hero is explicit in the poet’s mind or at least in the action’s threshold. But for the analogue to Don Quixote we must go to biology, rather than to art. The mother forms the baby in her womb. It is organically hers, and so for a brief time it will remain. But she has endowed it with a principle which will make her child recede ever more from being her creation. This inner life, seeking substance in the world of sense and of impression, becomes itself. The mother has created a babe--only to lose it. Similar is the fate of Quixote with Cervantes. From the womb of his will and bitter fancy comes the child. But Don Quixote is no sooner set on earth, than he proceeds by an organic evolution, by a series of accretions, assimilations, responses, to change wholly from the intent of his author--to turn indeed against him. He does not lose organic contact with his source, even as the man is child of his own childhood and of his parents in a way deeper than the parents’ conscious will or than biologic pattern. But above all, the child becomes himself. He has transcended vastly the amorphous thing lodged in his mother’s womb. So Don Quixote is transfigured beyond the sprightly scheme of his maker.