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Page:Legends of the City of Mexico (Janvier).djvu/159

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THE CALLE DE LA JOYA


ardent and a wilful nature, but Don Alonso loved her with a sincerity and humored her in all her whims and wants. When they went abroad together—always in a grand coach, with servants like flies around them—the whole City stood still and stared!

Doña Ysabel was not worthy of her husband's love: and so he was told one day, by whom there was no knowing, in a letter that was thrown from the street into the room where he was sitting, on the ground floor. It was his office of affairs, Señor. It is one of the rooms where the biscuits are baked now. In that letter he was bidden to watch with care his wife's doings with the Licenciado Don José Raul de Lara, the Fiscal of the Inquisition—who was a forlorn little man (hombrecillo) not at all deserving of any lady's love—and Don Alonso did watch, and what came of his watching was a very terrible thing.

He pretended, Señor, that he had an important affair with the Viceroy that would keep him at the Palace until far into the night; and so went his way from his home in the early evening—but went no farther than a dozen paces from his own door. There, in the dark

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