So, with his armor cleaned, the morion made into a closed helmet, a name given to his horse and his own name confirmed, he decided that the only thing he still lacked was a lady to fall in love with, since a knight-errant without love was a tree without leaves or fruit, a body without a soul. He said to himself:

The comparison sounds like a proverb, and in the romances it was close to one: every knight-errant serves a lady. Amadís of Gaul, Don Quixote’s favorite hero, does everything he does for Oriana, and he loves her before he wins a single fight. Here the order runs the other way. The lady comes last on the list, after the cleaned armor, the mended helmet and the horse’s name, as one more piece of equipment the profession requires. Cervantes puts it in a long sentence of past participles (limpias, hecho, puesto), each one a task ticked off.