o
the same, and I would like to be hearing about them night and day."

"And I just as much," said the landlady, "because I never have a quiet
moment in my house except when you are listening to some one reading; for
then you are so taken up that for the time being you forget to scold."

"That is true," said Maritornes; "and, faith, I relish hearing these
things greatly too, for they are very pretty; especially when they
describe some lady or another in the arms of her knight under the orange
trees, and the duenna who is keeping watch for them half dead with envy
and fright; all this I say is as good as honey."

"And you, what do you think, young lady?" said the curate turning to the
landlord's daughter.

"I don't know indeed, senor," said she; "I listen too, and to tell the
truth, though I do not understand it, I like hearing it; but it is not
the blows that my father likes that I like, but the laments the knights
utter when they are separated from their ladies; and indeed they
sometimes make me weep with the pity I feel for them."

"Then you would console them if it was for you they wept, young lady?"
said Dorothea.

"I don't know what I should do," said the girl; "I only know that there
are some of those ladies so cruel that they call their knights tigers and
lions and a thousand other foul names: and Jesus! I don't know what sort
of folk they can be, so unfeeling and heartless, that rather than bestow
a glance upon a worthy man they leave him to die or go mad. I don't know
what is the good of such prudery; if it is for honour's sake, why not
marry them? That's all they want."

"Hush, child," said the landlady; "it seems to me thou knowest a great
deal about these things, and it is not fit for girls to know or talk so
much."

"As the gentleman asked me, I could not help answering him," said the
girl.

"Well then," said the curate, "bring me these books, senor landlord, for
I should like to see them."

"With all my heart," said he, and going into his own room he brought out
an old valise secured with a little chain, on opening which the curate
found in it three large books and some manuscripts written in a very good
hand. The first that he opened he found to be "Don Cirongilio of Thrace,"
and the second "Don Felixmarte of Hircania," and the other the "History
of the Great Captain Gonzalo Hernandez de Cordova, with the Life of Diego
Garcia de Paredes."

When the curate read the two first titles he looked o