THE CALLE DE LA QUEMADA
lovers set off his quarrelsomeness at such a rate that he did nothing—in his spare time, when he was not making love to Doña Beatrice—but affront and anger them, so that he might have the pleasure of finding them at the point of his sword.
Now Doña Beatrice, Señor, was a young lady of a most delicate nature, and her notions about love were precisely the same as those which are entertained by the lady angels. Therefore Don Martín's continual fightings very much worried her: raising in her heart the dread that so violent a person must be of a coarse and carnal nature; and that, being of such a nature, his love for her came only from his beblindment by the outside beauty of her, and was not—as her own love was—the pure love of soul for soul. Moreover, she was pained by his being led on by his jealousy—for which there was no just occasion—to injure seriously, and even mortally, so many worthy young men.
Therefore Doña Beatrice—after much thinking and a great deal of praying over the matter—made her mind up to destroy her own beauty: that in that way she might put all jealousies
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