the muleteer

Also known as: carrier / the carrier / the singer / this musician · Role: carrier · First appears: Part 1, Ch. 3.2

Life events

• The muleteer breaks Don Quixote’s lance and beats him until he is unable to rise.(Part 1, Ch. 4.2)
  • With: Don Quixote
  • “One of the muleteers in attendance, who could not have had much good nature in him, hearing the poor prostrate man blustering in this style, was unable to refrain from giving him an answer on his ribs; and coming up to him he seized his lance, and having broken it in pieces, with one of them he began so to belabour our Don Quixote that, notwithstanding and in spite of his armour, he milled him like a measure of wheat.”
• Maritornes promises the muleteer an intimate meeting after the guests and family sleep.(Part 1, Ch. 16.1 · 📍 the inn)
  • With: Maritornes
  • “The carrier had made an arrangement with her for recreation that night, and she had given him her word that when the guests were quiet and the family asleep she would come in search of him and meet his wishes unreservedly.”
• The muleteer attacks Don Quixote while he struggles to hold Maritornes.(Part 1, Ch. 16.2 · 📍 the inn)
  • With: Don Quixote Maritornes
  • “he raised his arm and delivered such a terrible cuff on the lank jaws of the amorous knight that he bathed all his mouth in blood, and not content with this he mounted on his ribs and with his feet tramped all over them at a pace rather smarter than a trot.”
• The muleteer, Sancho, Maritornes, and the innkeeper pummel one another in the darkness.(Part 1, Ch. 16.2 · 📍 the inn)
  • With: Sancho Panza Maritornes the innkeeper
  • “the carrier pounded Sancho, Sancho the lass, she him, and the innkeeper her, and all worked away so briskly that they did not give themselves a moment’s rest”
• The muleteer falls in love with Clara and signals his wish to marry her from the house opposite hers.(Part 1, Ch. 43.1 · 📍 Madrid)
  • With: Doña Clara de Viedma
  • “One of the signs he used to make me was to link one hand in the other, to show me he wished to marry me;”
• Clara recognizes the gentleman she loves disguised as a muleteer at an inn.(Part 1, Ch. 43.1)
  • With: Doña Clara de Viedma
  • “But after we had been two days on the road, on entering the posada of a village a day’s journey from this, I saw him at the inn door in the dress of a muleteer, and so well disguised, that if I did not carry his image graven on my heart it would have been impossible for me to recognise him.”
• Clara reveals that she loves the disguised muleteer and fears her father discovering their secret love.(Part 1, Ch. 43.1)
  • With: Doña Clara de Viedma
  • “I have never spoken a word to him in my life; and for all that I love him so that I could not live without him.”