me.  I went with a heavy heart to Dona Clementa’s, and found her as much at ease as a lady should be in her own house.  Not daring to say a word to her, because Senor Don Lope was present, I returned to my landlady, who told me she had informed Dona Estefania that I was acquainted with her whole roguery; that she had asked how I had seemed to take the news; that she, the landlady, said I had taken it very badly, and had gone out to look for her, apparently with the worst intentions; whereupon Dona Estefania had gone away, taking with her all that was in my trunk, only leaving me one travelling coat.  I flew to my trunk, and found it open, like a coffin waiting for a dead body; and well might it have been my own, if sense enough had been left me to comprehend the magnitude of my misfortune.

“Great it was, indeed,” observed the licentiate Peralta; “only to think that Dona Estefania carried off your fine chain and hat-band!  Well, it is a true saying, ‘Misfortunes never come single.’”

I do not so much mind that loss, replied the Alferez, since I may apply to myself the old saw, “My father-in-law thought to cheat me by putting off his squinting daughter upon me; and I myself am blind of an eye.”

“I don’t know in what respect you can say that?” replied Peralta.

Why, in this respect, that all that lot of chains and gewgaws might be worth some ten or twelve crowns.

“Impossible!” exclaimed the licentiate; “for that which the Senor Alferez wore on his neck must have weighed more than two hundred ducats.”

So it would have done, replied the Alferez, if the reality had corresponded with the appearance; but “All is not gold that glitters,” and my fine things were only imitations, but so well made that nothing but the touchstone or the fire could have detected that they were not genuine.

“So, then, it seems to have been a drawn game between you and the Senora Dona Estefania,” said the licentiate.

So much so that we may shuffle the cards and make a fresh deal.  Only the mischief is, Senor Licentiate, that she may get rid of my mock chains, but I cannot get rid of the cheat she put upon me; for, in spite of my teeth, she remains my wife.

“You may thank God, Senor Campuzano,” said Peralta, “that your wife has taken to her heels, and that you are not obliged to go in search of her.”

Very true; but for all that, even without looking for her, I always find her—­in imagination; and wherever I am, my disgrace is always present before me.

“I know not what answer to make you, except to remind you of these two verses of Petrarch:—­

    “’Che qui prende diletto di far frode,
    Non s’ha di lamentar s’altro l’inganna.’

That is to say, whoever makes it his practice and his pleasure to deceive others, has no right to complain when he is himself deceived.”