the entreaties of that exemplary wife, the three holy
Maries remitted the remainder of their flagellation,
and retired, leaving Perez senseless on the floor.
Poor Juana was agonized at beholding the state to which
her graceless partner was reduced, and hauling him,
as well as her own exhausted strength would permit,
upon his miserable pallet, washed the blood and dust
from his wounds, and watched his return to consciousness
with unexampled tenderness and dutiful fidelity.
Perez at length opened his eyes, and said, in the
mild voice which was natural to him when sober, “My
poor Juana, I wish you could fetch your cousin Pedro
to see me; I think I shall die.” Juana
was half distracted at this speech; and running to
the next house, bribed a neighbour’s child by
the promise of a broad-brimmed straw hat, to shade
his complexion from the sun, to run for Doctor Pedrillo.
Pedro soon arrived, and was evidently more puzzled
respecting his deportment than the case of his patient.
Sundry “nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles,”
and sundry eloquent glances of his bright black eyes,
were covertly bestowed upon his fair cousin;
anon, with ludicrous solemnity, he felt the pulse
of Perez, shook his head, and, in short, imitated
with inimitable exactness all the technical airs and
graces of a regular graduate of Salamanca.—“Cousin,”
cried he at length, with a sly look at Juana, “I
pity your plight—from my soul I do; but
your case is, I am grieved to say, desperate, unless
I am informed of the cause of these monstrous
weals, bruises, slashes, and chafings, in order that
my prescription, may—“—“The
cause of them,” said Perez, almost frightened
to death, “is, having to my cost a saint
of a wife.”—“How! that a misfortune?
explain yourself, my poor fellow.”—“Readily,”
replied Donilla, “if that will help to heal
me.”—He then explained minutely the
circumstances of the case, concluding thus:—“Not
but what I am, after all, remarkably indebted to Juana,
for had she only called the eleven thousand Virgins
to her assistance, their zeal would undoubtedly have
divided my body amongst them; since, then, my wife
has such friends in heaven; I shall henceforth be
careful how I enrage them again.”—Perez
Donilla kept to his resolution, and the Three Maries,
whom, without doubt, the intelligent reader has recognised
through their disguise, lived for many years to rejoice
in the blessed effects of a severe, but merited infliction.
M.L.B.
* * * * *
RETROSPECTIVE GLEANINGS.
* * * * *
THEATRICAL BILL.
At a play acted in 1511, on the Feast of St. Margaret, the following disbursements were made as the charges of the exhibition:—