LEGENDS OF THE CITY OF MEXICO
noble ceremony, he must have been a gentleman well turned of forty, Señor, when the matters whereof I now am telling you occurred: of which the beginning—and also the middle and the ending, because everything hinged upon it—was his falling most furiously in love with a very beautiful young lady; and his falling in love in that furious fashion was the very first sign of energy that in all his lifetime, until that moment, he had shown. The name of this beautiful young lady with whom he fell in love so furiously was Doña Sara de García Somera y Acuña; and she was less than half as old as he was, but possessed of a very sensible nature that made her do more thinking than is done usually by young ladies; and she was of a noble house, and a blood relative of the Viceroy's: for which reason the Viceroy—who by that time was Don Juan de Acuña, Marqués de Casafuerte—was much interested in the whole affair.
The love-making of this so notoriously lazy gentleman did not at all go upon wheels, Señor: because Doña Sara set herself—as was her habit when dealing with any matter of importance—to thinking about it very serious-
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