hough it pleased her no little to hear the praises
of her beauty. At this moment a screen was pushed aside, and there
began to appear a huge bulk of petticoats, which was nothing less than
the person of the mayoress, for she was with child and drawing near to
her time. And when she saw Maria, she started, opened her eyes a
hand's-breadth wide, bit her lips, and called hurriedly for her
husband. They stepped aside for a good while, and then hied them
thence, and when they returned the mutes and maidens had all gone.

While they were burying the defunct lady I must tell you, curious
readers, that the mayor and mayoress had been married for many years
without having any children, and they longed for them like the
countryman for rain in the month of May, and at last her hour of bliss
came to the mayoress, to the great content of her husband. Now, it
was whispered that the said lady had always been somewhat capricious;
judge for yourselves what she would be now in the time of her
pregnancy! And as she was already on the way to fifty, she was more
than mediocrely bald and hairless, and on these very same days had
commissioned a woman barber, who lived in the odor of witchcraft, to
prepare for her some false hair, but it was not to be that of a dead
woman, for the mayoress said very sensibly that if the hair belonged
to a dead woman who rejoiced in supreme glory, or was suffering for
her sins in purgatory, it would be profanation to wear any pledge of
theirs, and if they were in hell, it was a terrible thing to wear on
one's person relics of one of the damned. And when the mayoress saw
the abundant locks of Maria, she coveted them for herself, and it was
for this reason that she called to the mayor to speak to her in
private and besought him eagerly to persuade Mario to allow herself to
be shorn upon the return from the burial.

"I warn you," said the mayor, "that you are desirous of entering upon
a very knotty bargain, for the disheveled girl idolizes her hair in
such wise that she would sooner lose a finger than suffer one of her
tresses to be cut off."

"I warn you," replied the mayoress, "that if on this very day the head
of this young girl is not shorn smooth beneath my hand as a melon, the
child to which I am about to give birth will have a head of hair on
its face, and if it happens to be a female, look you, a pretty
daughter is in store for you!"

"But bethink yourself that Maria will ask, who knows, a good few
cr