“I am the youngest son of a marquess,” answered the youth, “a barber by trade, and affianced to the daughter of the King of Castille.”
Then the princess stepped forward and explained everything to the king, who was so interested with what he heard, that the princess and the barber had to tell the tale over and over again to him. Then he said—
“I have been shaved by the King of Castille’s daughter, and I have courted his barber. I will not be again deceived. They shall now be man and wife for ever.”
This was the wise King of Leon.
THE COBBLER OF BURGOS.
Not far from the Garden of the Widows, in Burgos, lived a cobbler who was so poor that he had not even smiled for many years. Every day he saw the widow ladies pass his small shop on the way to and from the garden; but in their bereavement it would not have been considered correct for them to have bestowed a glance on him, and they required all the money they could scrape together, after making ample provision for their comfort—which, as ladies, they did not neglect—to pay for Masses for the repose of the souls of their husbands, according to the doctrines of the faith which was pinned on to them in childhood.
The priests, however, would sometimes bestow their blessing on Sancho the cobbler; but beyond words he got nothing from the comforters of the widows and of the orphans.
Some of the great families would have their boots soled by him; but being very great and rich people, they demanded long credit, so that he was heard to say that a rich man’s money was almost as scarce as virtue.