"His name is Fabricio, and he was hardly fifteen years of age when his father, a wealthy cultivator of Cinquello, a large village of the kingdom of Leon, died. He lost his mother shortly afterwards; so that, being an only son, he became thus early the master of a considerable property, the management of which was confided to an uncle, who happened to be honest. Fabricio completed his studies at Salamanca, where he had been previously placed; he then particularly devoted himself to the noble accomplishments of riding and fencing; in a word, he neglected nothing which might concur to render him worthy the sweet regards of Donna Hippolita, sister of a vegetating signor, whose cottage was about a couple of gun-shots from Cinquello. "This lady was beautiful in the extreme, and about the age of Fabricio, who, having seen her from his infancy, had, to speak vulgarly, sucked in with his mother's milk the love which occupied his soul in manhood. Hippolita, on her side, could not help perceiving that Fabricio was not ill-made; but, knowing him to be the son of a husbandman, she had never deigned to look on him with attention. Her pride was only equalled by her loveliness, and by the haughty bearing of her brother, Don Thomaso de Xaral, who was probably unsurpassed, even in Spain, for his lordly want of money, and his beggarly pride. "This inflated country gentleman lived in a small house which he dignified by the name of castle, but which to speak properly was a ruin, so little had the winds respected his nobility. However, although his means did not enable him to repair his mansion, and although he had hardly enough to sustain himself, he must needs keep a valet to attend upon his person; nay, he even kept a Moorish female to wait upon his sister. "It was a refreshing sight to witness, in the village, on Sundays and at every festival, Don Thomaso habited in crimson velvet, but sadly faded, and a little hat, overshadowed with an ancient plume of yellow feathers, which were carefully enshrined, like relics, on the common days of the year. Disporting this frippery, which to him was proof apparent of his noble birth, he would affect the grandee, and seemed to think that he amply repaid the reverence that was offered to him when he condescended to notice it by an approving smile. His fair sister was not less vain than himself of the antiquity of her race; and she joined to this folly that of such self-congratulation on her charms, that she lived in the most perfect confidence that ere long some noble signor would come to beg the honour of her hand.