This essay examines two passages at the beginning of Cervantes's 'El celoso extremeño' which intimate an imaginative link between the weather at sea (especially the activity of the wind) and the movements of the protagonist, Felipo de Carrizales's mind and will. It is argued that these passages may be seen to encapsulate the paradoxical vision of the will as both free and constrained which unfolds in the course of the novela as whole.