While they are 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 odour 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 on 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 Maria 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 dishevelled girl idolises 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 crowns for this shaving.”
“Bethink yourself, that if not, your heir or heiress, begotten after so many years’ marriage, will come amiss; and bear in mind, by the way, that we are not so young as to hope to replace this by another.”
Upon this she turned her back to the Mayor, and went to her apartment crying out: “I want the hair, I must have the hair, and if I do not get the hair, by my halidom I shall never become a mother.”
In the meantime the funeral had taken place without any novelty to mention, excepting that if in the streets any loose fellow in the crowd assayed to annoy the fair Maria, the hooded mute, of whom we made mention before, quickly drew from beneath his cloak a strap, with which he gave a lash to the insolent rogue without addressing one word to him, and then walked straight on as if nothing had happened. When all the mourners returned, the Mayor seized hold of Mari hand and said to her—
“And now, fair maid, let us withdraw for a little while into this other apartment,” and thus talking whilst in motion he brought her into his wife’s private tiring-room, and sat himself down in a chair and bent his head and stroked his beard with the mien of one who is studying what beginning to give to his speech. Maria, a little foolish and confused, remained standing in front of the Mayor, and she also humbly lowered before him her eyes, black as the sloe; and to occupy herself with something, gently fingered the ends of the sash which girded her waist and hung down over her skirt, not knowing what to expect from the grave mien and long silence of the Mayor, who, raising his eyes and looking up at Maria, when he beheld her in so modest a posture, devised thence a motive with which to begin, saying—
“Forsooth, Maria, so modest and sanctimonious is thy bearing, that it is easy to see thou art preparing thyself to become a black wimpled nun. And if it be so, as I presume it to be, I now offer of my own accord to dispose of thy entry into the cloisters without any dowry, on condition that thou dost give me something that thou hast on thy head, and which then wilt not be necessary for thee.”
“Nay, beshrew me, Sir Mayor,” replied Maria, “for I durst not think that the Lord calls upon me to take that step, for then my poor father would remain in the world without the staff of his old age.”