ad no mind to go after her and bring back upon myself
an evil I was rid of. I changed my lodgings and my skin too within a few
days. My eyebrows and eyelashes began to drop; my hair left me by
degrees; and I was bald before my time, and stripped of everything; for
I had neither a beard to comb nor money to spend. My illness kept pace
with my want; and as poverty bears down honour, drives some to the
gallows, some to the hospital, and makes others enter their enemies'
doors with cringing submissiveness, which is one of the greatest
miseries that can befall an unlucky man; that I might not expend upon my
cure the clothes that should cover me respectably in health, I entered
the Hospital of the Resurrection, where I took forty sudations. They say
that I shall get well if I take care of myself. I have my sword; for the
rest I trust in God.

The licentiate renewed his friendly offers, much wondering at the things
he had heard.

If you are surprised at the little I have told you, Senor Peralta, said
the Alferez, what will you say to the other things I have yet to relate,
which exceed all imagination, since they pass all natural bounds? I can
only tell you that they are such that I think it a full compensation for
all my disasters that they were the cause of my entering the hospital,
where I saw what I shall now relate to you; and what you can never
believe; no; nor anybody else in the world.

All these preambles of the Alferez so excited Peralta's curiosity, that
he earnestly desired to hear, in detail, all that remained to be told.

You have no doubt seen, said the Alferez, two dogs going about by night
with lanterns along with the Capuchin brethren, to give them light when
they are collecting alms.

"I have," replied Peralta.

You have also seen, or heard tell of them, that if alms are thrown from
the windows, and happen to fall on the ground, they immediately help
with the light and begin to look for what has fallen; that they stop of
their own accord before the windows from which they know they are used
to receive alms; and that with all their tameness on these occasions, so
that they are more like lambs than dogs, they are lions in the hospital,
keeping guard with great care and vigilance.

"I have heard that all this is as you say," said Peralta; "but there is
nothing in this to move my wonder."

But what I shall now tell you of them, returned the Alferez, is enough
to do so; yet, strange as it is, you must bri