Anecdote

 DQ and Sancho are talking. DQ uses a metaphor for death: the actors in a comedy, after they are finished with play, take off their costumes and they are all equalized, with no difference any more between kings and peasants.  So it is in the grave. Then Sancho says he has heard this before and says that he has a similar metaphor: in the chess game the different pieces have a different status, queens and kings, knights, or pawns. But after the game the chess pieces are just thrown into the same bag.  DQ congratulates Sancho on his discretion: he is getting smarter! Then Sancho attributes his own increased discernment to his travels with DQ. The dialogue is perfectly sane; the two friends seem equally wise and adept at handling rhetorical commonplaces. So Cervantes himself is a compendium of such wisdom, expressed both through Sancho's proverbs and DQ's more erudite discourse. And, of course, many other people with whom the come into contact.