most beautiful, graceful, and lovable
damsels to be found throughout all Castile and the kingdoms beyond.

For she was white as the lily and red like the rose, straight and tall
of stature, and slender in the waist, with fair, shapely hips; and
again her foot and hand were plump and small to a marvel, and she
possessed a head of hair which reached to her knees. For I knew the
widow Sarmiento who was their housekeeper, and she told me how she
could scarcely clasp Mariquita's hair with both hands, and that she
could not comb the hair unless Maria stood up and the housekeeper
mounted on a footstool, for if Maria sat down the long tresses swept
the ground, and therefore became all entangled.

And do not imagine, her beauty and grace being such, that she sinned
greatly in pride and levity, as is the wont of girls in this age. She
was as humble as a cloistered lay-sister, and as silent as if she were
not a woman, and patient as the sucking lamb, and industrious as the
ant, clean as the ermine, and pure as a saint of those times in which,
by the grace of the Most High, saintly women were born into the world.
But I must confide to you in friendship that our Mariquita was not a
little vain about her hair, and loved to display it, and for this
reason, now in the streets, now when on a visit, now when at mass, it
is said she used to subtilely loosen her mantilla so that her tresses
streamed down her back, the while feigning forgetfulness and
carelessness. She never wore a hood, for she said it annoyed her and
choked her; and every time that her father reproached her for some
deed deserving of punishment and threatened to cut off her hair, I
warrant you she suffered three times more than after a lash from the
whip, and would then be good for three weeks successively; so much so
that Juan Lanas, perceiving her amendment, would laugh under his
cloak, and when saying his say to his gossips would tell them that his
daughter, like the other saint of Sicily, would reach heaven by her
hair.

Having read so far, you must now know that Juan Lanas, the blind man,
with the change of district and dwelling did not change his judgment
and if he was crack-brained at San Garcia, he remained crack-brained
at Toledo, consuming in this resort his money upon worthless drugs and
quacks which did not cure his blindness and impoverished him more and
more every day, so that if his daughter had not been so dexterous with
her fingers in making and broid