t to the slipper and the broom.

Rinconete and Cortadillo stood in much admiration of that new invention
of the broom, for up to that time they had seen nothing like it.
Maniferro perceived their amazement, and said to them, "The broom
awakens your admiration,--and well it may, since a more convenient kind
of instrument was never invented in this world, nor one more readily
formed, or less costly. Upon my life, I heard a student the other day
affirm, that neither the man who fetched his wife out of hell--Negrofeo,
Ogrofeo, or what was he called--nor that Marion who got upon a dolphin,
and came out of the sea like a man riding on a hired mule--nor even that
other great musician who built a city with a hundred gates and as many
posterns--never a one of them invented an instrument half so easy of
acquirement, so ready to the touch, so pleasing and simple as to its
frets, keys, and chords, and so far from troublesome in the tuning and
keeping in accord; and by all the saints, they swear that it was
invented by a gallant of this very city, a perfect Hector in matters of
music."

"I fully believe all you say," replied Rinconete, "but let us listen,
for our musicians are about to sing. Gananciosa is blowing her nose,
which is a certain sign that she means to sing."

And she was, in fact, preparing to do so. Monipodio had requested her to
give the company some of the Seguidillas most in vogue at the moment.
But the first to begin was Escalanta, who sang as follows, in a thin
squeaking voice:--

"For a boy of Sevilla,
Red as a Dutchman,
All my heart's in flame."

To which Gananciosa replied, taking up the measure as she best might--

"For the little brown lad,
With a good bright eye,
Who would not lose her name?"

Then Monipodio, making great haste to perform a symphony with his pieces
of platter, struck in--

"Two lovers dear, fall out and fight,
But soon, to make their peace, take leisure;
And all the greater was the row,
So much the greater is the pleasure."

But Cariharta had no mind to enjoy her recovered happiness in silence
and fingering another clog, she also entered the dance, joining her
voice to those of her friends, in the following words--

"Pause, angry lad! and do not beat me more,
For 'tis thine own dear flesh that thou dost baste,
If thou but well consider, and--"

"Fair and soft," exclaimed Repolido, at that moment, "give us no old