Cervantes on Liberty as Master Value

Thanks to Rick's Bastille Day post, I read and enjoyed Conor Cruise O'Brien's essay on Burke.  In that piece, O'Brien quotes an extended passage from Reflections on the Revolution in France:

Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour, and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind. Abstractedly speaking, government, as well as liberty, is good; yet could I, in common sense, ten years ago, have felicitated France on her enjoyment of a government (for she then had a government) without enquiry what the nature of that government was, or how it was administered? Can I now congratulate the same nation upon its freedom? Is it because liberty, in the abstract may be classed amongst the blessings of mankind, that I am seriously to felicitate a madman, who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty? Am I to congratulate an highwayman and murderer, who has broke prison, upon the recovery of his natural rights? This would be to act over again the scene of the criminals condemned to the gallies, and their heroic deliverer, the metaphysic Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance.

This passage occurs quite early in the Reflections, and "the metaphysic Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance" is the sobriquet that Don Quixote assumes (I think Sancho Panza chooses it for him).  In the scene referenced and used to great effect by Burke, Don Quixote sees a chain of convicted criminals in manacles walking along the road and guarded closely by several armed officers.  When he learns from Sancho that the convicts are being moved "by force," Don Quixote takes action to "liberate them" -- "to put down force and to succor and help the wretched."  Cervantes is depicting one of the ways in which madness is manifested: in an unflinching and absolute commitment to an abstract value -- here liberty -- no matter the circumstances or cost.