Having got rid of the servants, the duena went back to the saloon, and began to exercise her powers of persuasion upon Leonora.  She made her a long and plausible harangue, so well put together that one might have supposed she had composed it beforehand.  She extolled the good looks of the gentle musico, the elegance of his manners, his wondrous suavity, and his countless other good qualities; represented how infinitely more agreeable must be the caresses of such a charming young gallant than those of the old husband; assured her the affair would never be discovered, and plied her with a thousand other arguments which the devil put into her mouth, all so specious and so artfully coloured, that they might have beguiled the firmest mind, much more that of a being so artless and unwary as poor Leonora.  O duenas, born and used for the perdition of thousands of modest, virtuous beings!  O ye long plaited coifs, chosen to impart an air of grave decorum to the salas of noble ladies, how do you reverse the functions of your perhaps needful office!  In fine, the duena talked with such effect, that Leonora consented to her own undoing, and to that of all the precautions of the wary Carrizales, whose sleep was the death of his honour.  Marialonso took her mistress by the hand, led the weeping lady almost by force to Loaysa, and wishing them much joy with a diabolical leer, she left them both shut in together, and laid herself down in the saloon to sleep, or rather to await the reward she had earned.  Overcome, however, by the loss of rest on two successive nights, she could not keep her eyes open, but fell fast asleep on the carpet.

And now, if we did not know that Carrizales was asleep, it would not be amiss to ask him, where now were all his jealous cares and precautions?  What now availed the lofty walls of his house, and the exclusion from it of every male creature?  What had he gained by his turning-box, his thick walls, his stopped up windows, the enormously strict seclusion to which he had doomed his family, the large jointure he had settled on Leonora, the presents he was continually making her, his liberal treatment of her attendants, and his unfailing alacrity in supplying them with everything he imagined they could want or wish for?  But as we have said, he was asleep.  Had he been awake, and disposed to reply, he could not have given a better answer than by saying, as he shrugged his shoulders and arched his eyebrows, that all this had been brought to nought by the craft of an idle and vicious young man, and the wickedness of a faithless duena, working upon the weakness of an artless and inexperienced girl.  Heaven save us all from such enemies as these, against whom the shield of prudence and the sword of vigilance are alike impotent to defend us!