to a scullery-maid about celestial realms, and spheres, and ocean-beds, and to call her stars and suns and all the rest of it?  If you had told her she was as straight as asparagus, as white as milk, as modest as a lay-brother in his novitiate, more full of humours and unmanageable than a hired mule, and harder than a lump of dry mortar, why then she would have understood you and been pleased; but your fine words are fitter for a scholar than for a scullery-maid.  Truly, there are poets in the world who write songs that the devil himself could not understand; for my part, at least, Barrabas though I am, I cannot make head or tail of what this fellow has been singing.  What did he suppose Costanza could make of them?  But she knows better than to listen to such stuff, for she is snug in bed, and cares no more for all these caterwaulers than she does for Prester John.  This fellow at least, is not one of the singers belonging to the corregidor’s son, for they are out and out good ones, and a body can generally understand them; but, by the Lord, this fellow sets me mad.”

The bystanders coincided in opinion with Barrabas, and thought his criticism very judicious.  Everybody now went to bed, but no sooner was the house all still, than Lope heard some one calling very softly at his bed-room door.  “Who’s there?” said he.  “It is we,” whispered a voice, “Argueello and the Gallegan.  Open the door and let us in, for we are dying of cold.”

“Dying of cold indeed,” said Lope, “and we are in the middle of the dog days.”

“Oh, leave off now, friend Lope,” said the Gallegan; “get up and open the door; for here we are as fine as archduchesses.”

“Archduchesses, and at this hour?  I don’t believe a word of it, but rather think you must be witches or something worse.  Get out of that this moment, or, by all that’s damnable, if you make me get up I’ll leather you with my belt till your hinder parts are as red as poppies.”

Finding that he answered them so roughly, and in a manner so contrary to their expectations, the two disappointed damsels returned sadly to their beds; but before they left the door, Argueello put her lips to the key-hole, and hissed through it, “Honey was not made for the mouth of the ass;” and with that, as if she had said something very bitter indeed, and taken adequate revenge on the scorner, she went off to her cheerless bed.

“Look you, Tomas,” said Lope to his companion, as soon as they were gone, “set me to fight two giants, or to break the jaws of half a dozen, or a whole dozen of lions, if it be requisite for your service, and I shall do it as readily as I would drink a glass of wine; but that you should put me under the necessity of encountering Argueello, this is what I would never submit to, no, not if I were to be flayed alive.  Only think, what damsels of Denmark[81] fate has thrown upon us this night.  Well, patience!  To-morrow will come, thank God, and then we shall see.”