At first I wish the babe to remain in this city, and afterwards to be taken to a village.  As for what is subsequently done, I will give you instructions on my return from Guadalupe, if it is God’s will that I should live to complete my pilgrimage, for in the meantime I shall have had leisure to consider what may be my best course.  I shall have no need of a midwife; for as I know from other confinements of mine, more honourable than this, I shall do well enough with the aid of my women only, and thus I shall avoid having an additional witness to my misfortune.’

“Here the poor distressed pilgrim ended what she had to say, and broke out into a flood of tears, but was partly composed by the soothing words spoken to her by my wife, who had recovered her wits.  I immediately went in search of a woman to whom I might take the child when it was born; and, between twelve and one o’clock that night, when all the people in the house were fast asleep, the lady was delivered of the most beautiful little girl that eyes ever beheld, and the very same that your worship has just seen.  But the wonder was that neither did the mother make any moan in her labour, nor did the baby cry; but all passed off quietly, and in all the silence that became this extraordinary case.  The lady kept her bed for six days, during which the doctor was constant in his visits; not that she had informed him of the cause of her illness, or that she took any of the medicines he prescribed; but she thought to blind her men-servants by his visits, as she afterwards informed me when she was out of danger.  On the eighth day she left her bed, apparently as big as she had been before her delivery, continued her pilgrimage, and returned in three weeks, looking almost quite well, for she had gradually reduced the bulk of her artificial dropsy.  The little girl had been christened Costanza, in accordance with the order given me by her mother, and was already placed with a nurse in a village about two leagues hence, where she passed for my niece.  The lady was pleased to express her satisfaction with all I had done, and gave me when she was going away a gold chain, which is now in my possession, from which she took off six links, telling me that they would be brought by the person who should come to claim the child.  She also took a piece of white parchment, wrote upon it, and then cut zigzag through what she had written.  Look, sir, here are my hands locked together with the fingers interwoven.  Now suppose your honour were to write across my fingers, it is easy to imagine that one could read the writing whilst the fingers were joined, but that the meaning would be lost as soon as the hands were separated, and would appear again as soon as they were united as before.  Just so with the parchment; one half serves as a key to the other; when they are put together the letters make sense, but separately they have no meaning.  One-half of the parchment and the whole chain, short of the six links, were left with me,