th, and four
days, since there came to this house a lady dressed in the habit of a
pilgrim, and carried in a litter. She was attended by four servant-men
on horseback, and two duenas and a damsel who rode in a coach. She had
also two sumpter mules richly caparisoned, and carrying a fine bed and
all the necessary implements for cooking. In short, the whole equipage
was first rate, and the pilgrim had all the appearance of being some
great lady; and though she seemed to be about forty years of age, she
was nevertheless beautiful in the extreme. She was in bad health, looked
pale, and was so weary, that she ordered her bed to be instantly made,
and her servants made it in this very room. They asked me who was the
most famous physician in this city. I said Doctor de la Fuente. They
went for him instantly; he came without delay, saw his patient alone,
and the result was that he ordered the bed to be made in some other part
of the house, where the lady might not be disturbed by any noise, which
was immediately done. None of the men-servants entered the lady's
apartment, but only the two duenas and the damsel. My wife and I asked
the men-servants who was this lady, what was her name, whence she came,
and whither she was going? Was she wife, widow, or maid, and why she
wore that pilgrim's dress? To all these questions, which we repeated
many and many a time, we got no other answer than that this pilgrim was
a noble and wealthy lady of old Castile, that she was a widow, and had
no children to inherit her wealth; and that having been for some months
ill of the dropsy, she had made a vow to go on a pilgrimage to our Lady
of Guadalupe, and that was the reason for the dress she wore. As for her
name, they were under orders to call her nothing but the lady pilgrim.

"So much we learned then; but three days after one of the duenas called
myself and my wife into the lady's presence, and there, with the door
locked, and before her women, she addressed us with tears in her eyes, I
believe in these very words:--

"'Heaven is my witness, friends, that without any fault of mine, I find
myself in the cruel predicament which I shall now declare to you. I am
pregnant, and so near my time, that I already feel the pangs of travail.
None of my men-servants are aware of my misfortune, but from my women
here I have neither been able nor desirous to conceal it. To escape
prying eyes in my own neighbourhood, and that this hour might not come
upon me