ntusions
and bruises. She had no sooner got into the Patio, than she fell to the
ground in a fainting fit. Gananciosa and Escalanta[33] sprang to her
assistance, unfastened her dress, and found her breast and shoulders
blackened and covered with marks of violence. After they had thrown
water on her face, she soon came to herself, crying out as she did so,
"The justice of God and the king on that shameless thief, that cowardly
cut-purse, and dirty scoundrel, whom I have saved from the gibbet more
times than he has hairs in his beard. Alas! unhappy creature that I am!
see for what I have squandered my youth, and spent the flower of my
days! For an unnatural, worthless, and incorrigible villain!"

[33] The clamberer.

"Recover yourself, and be calm, Cariharta," said Monipodio; "I am here
to render justice to you and to all. Tell me your cause of complaint,
and you shall be longer in relating the story than I will be in taking
vengeance. Let me know if anything has happened between you and your
_respeto_;[34] and if you desire to be well and duly avenged. You have
but to open your mouth."

[34] Protector, or more exactly "bully,"--to defend and uphold in acts
of fraud and violence.

"Protector!" exclaimed the girl. "What kind of a protector is he? It
were better for me to be protected in hell than to remain any longer
with that lion among sheep, and sheep among men! Will I ever eat again
with him at the same table, or live under the same roof? Rather would I
give this flesh of mine, which he has put into the state you shall see,
to be devoured alive by raging beasts." So saying, she pulled up her
petticoats to her knees, and even a little higher, and showed the wheals
with which she was covered. "That's the way," she cried, "that I have
been treated by that ungrateful Repolido,[35] who owes more to me than
to the mother that bore him.

[35] Dandy.

"And why do you suppose he has done this? Do you think I have given him
any cause?--no, truly. His only reason for serving me so was, that being
at play and losing his money, he sent Cabrillas, his scout, to me for
thirty reals, and I could only send him twenty-four. May the pains and
troubles with which I earned them be counted to me by heaven in
remission of my sins! But in return for this civility and kindness,
fancying that I had kept back part of what he chose to think I had got,
the blackguard lured me out to the fields this morning, beyond the
king's garden, and th