In Part Two, 3,300 lashes are prescribed to break Dulcinea’s enchantment.
The punishment is proposed during the duke and duchess’s elaborate practical jokes. Don Quixote believes that Dulcinea has been transformed or enchanted, while Sancho knows that the supposed enchantment is part of a story he himself helped create. The nobles exploit both men’s beliefs for entertainment.
The proposed remedy is for Sancho to give himself three thousand three hundred lashes. Sancho naturally objects, since the punishment is painful and the enchantment is not a real magical condition. His reluctance becomes a recurring source of comic conflict between the squire and his master, who repeatedly pressures him to perform the required penance.
The episode illustrates how Part Two differs from Part One: characters within the novel have read about Don Quixote and deliberately manipulate his fantasies. The number is sometimes misremembered as 3,000 because the round figure sounds more natural, but Cervantes’s comic prescription is specifically 3,300 lashes.