LEGENDS OF THE CITY OF MEXICO
bishop: hoping that for friendship's sake the Archbishop would be so obliging as to dispense him from his vow. For myself, Señor, I cannot but think that the Archbishop—for all that his position put him in close touch with heavenly matters, and gave him the right to deal with them—was not well advised in his action. At any rate, what he did was to tran-quillize Don Tristan by telling him that the Blessed Virgin was too considerate to hold him to a contract that certainly would lay him up with a bad attack of rheumatism; and that even—so wearied out would he be by forcing his old thin legs to carry him all that distance—might be the death of him. And so the upshot of it was that the Archbishop, being an easy-going and a very good-natured gentleman, dispensed Don Tristan from his vow.
But a vow, Señor, is a vow—and even an Archbishop cannot cast one loose from it; and so they all found out on this occasion, and in a hurry—because the Blessed Virgin, while never huffed over trifles, does not let the grass grow under her feet when her anger justly is aroused.
Only three days after Don Tristan had received his dispensation—to which, as the event
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