Finally Love sets to moralising, and departs after warning his client against over-indulgence in either white wine or red, holding up as an awful example the hermit who, after years of ascetic practices, got drunk for the first time in his life, and committed atrocious crimes which brought him to the gallows. The Archpriest ponders over Love’s seductive precepts, finds that his conduct hitherto has been in accordance with them, determines to persevere in the same crooked but pleasant path, and looks forward to the future with glad confidence. He straightway consults Love’s wife—Venus—concerning a new passion which (as he says) he has conceived for Doña Endrina, a handsome young widow of Calatayud. Whatever may be the case with the Archpriest’s other love affairs, this episode in the Libro de buen amor is imaginative, being an extremely brilliant hispaniolisation of a dreary Latin play entitled De Amore, ascribed to a misty personage known as Pamphilus Maurilianus—apparently a monk who lived during the twelfth century. The old crone of the Latin play reappears in the Libro de buen amor as Urraca (better recognised by her nickname of Trotaconventos), Galatea becomes Doña Endrina, and Pamphilus becomes Don Melón de la Uerta. There are passages in which Don Melón de la Uerta seems, at first sight, to be a pseudonym of the Archpriest’s; but the source of the story is beyond all doubt, for Juan Ruiz supplies a virtuous ending, and carefully explains that for the licentious character of the narrative Pamphilus and Ovid are responsible:—
doña endrina e don melon en vno casados son,
alegran se las conpañas en las bodas con rrason;
sy vjllanja ha dicho aya de vos perdon,
quelo felo de estoria dis panfilo e nason.
In order that there may be no misconception on this point, the Archpriest returns to it later, averring that no such experience ever befell him personally, and that he gives the story to set women on their guard against lying procuresses and bland lechers:—
Entyende byen mj estoria dela fija del endrino,
dixela per te dar ensienpro, non por que amj vjno;
guardate de falsa vieja, de rriso de mal vesjno,
sola con ome non te fyes, njn te llegues al espjno.