"There was once a very rich negro who lived in front of the house of a fine young woman, with whom he fell in love. The young woman, vexed by the soft attentions and endearments of the fellow, laid the matter before her husband, who told her to make an appointment with the negro for that evening. She did so, and he came, bringing a world of presents. She received him in a drawing-room that had three doors. There she had a grand supper prepared for him. But they were hardly seated at the table when the light was put out, and the husband came in with a cowhide, with which he began to lash the negro's shoulders. The latter was so confounded that he could not find a door to escape through, and kept exclaiming as he danced under the blows:
"Poor little negro, what evil fortune!
Where there are three doors, he cannot find one.'
"At last, he chanced upon one, and rushed out like the wind. But the husband was after him, and gave him a push that sent him from the top of the stairs to the bottom. A servant hearing the noise he made, ran to ask the cause. 'What would it be,' answered the black, 'but that I went up on my tiptoes and came down on my ribs?'
"Que he subido de puntillas.
The bajado de costillas."
"Uncle Pedro," asked the muleteer, laughing, "was that the cause of your remaining estranged?"
"No," said Pedro, "eight days afterwards, I armed myself with courage and returned to the grating, but Maria would not open the window."
"Aunt Maria did not want you to be stoned to death like Saint Stephen," said the muleteer.
"It was not that, boy; the truth is, that Miguel Ortiz, who had just completed his term, returned to the place, and it suited Maria to forsake one and take up with another who----"
"Was not afraid," interrupted Maria, "to talk, with good intentions, to a girl in the neighborhood of a consecrated object; for, do you suppose that all those souls were spinsters?"
"I think so, Maria, because the married pass their purgatory in this world--the men, because their wives torment them, and the women, through what their children cause them to suffer. Well, sirs, I took the matter so to heart that I could not stay in Dos-Hermanas when the wedding was celebrated, and I went to Alcalá."