ght up under my care and direction, I
being the oldest and highest in rank of her mother's duennas. Time
passed, and the young Antonomasia reached the age of fourteen, and such a
perfection of beauty, that nature could not raise it higher. Then, it
must not be supposed her intelligence was childish; she was as
intelligent as she was fair, and she was fairer than all the world; and
is so still, unless the envious fates and hard-hearted sisters three have
cut for her the thread of life. But that they have not, for Heaven will
not suffer so great a wrong to Earth, as it would be to pluck unripe the
grapes of the fairest vineyard on its surface. Of this beauty, to which
my poor feeble tongue has failed to do justice, countless princes, not
only of that country, but of others, were enamoured, and among them a
private gentleman, who was at the court, dared to raise his thoughts to
the heaven of so great beauty, trusting to his youth, his gallant
bearing, his numerous accomplishments and graces, and his quickness and
readiness of wit; for I may tell your highnesses, if I am not wearying
you, that he played the guitar so as to make it speak, and he was,
besides, a poet and a great dancer, and he could make birdcages so well,
that by making them alone he might have gained a livelihood, had he found
himself reduced to utter poverty; and gifts and graces of this kind are
enough to bring down a mountain, not to say a tender young girl. But all
his gallantry, wit, and gaiety, all his graces and accomplishments, would
have been of little or no avail towards gaining the fortress of my pupil,
had not the impudent thief taken the precaution of gaining me over first.
First, the villain and heartless vagabond sought to win my good-will and
purchase my compliance, so as to get me, like a treacherous warder, to
deliver up to him the keys of the fortress I had in charge. In a word, he
gained an influence over my mind, and overcame my resolutions with I know
not what trinkets and jewels he gave me; but it was some verses I heard
him singing one night from a grating that opened on the street where he
lived, that, more than anything else, made me give way and led to my
fall; and if I remember rightly they ran thus:

From that sweet enemy of mine
My bleeding heart hath had its wound;
And to increase the pain I'm bound
To suffer and to make no sign.

The lines seemed pearls to me and his voice sweet as syrup; and
afterwards, I may say e