"As soon as he had exposed to the assembly this presumptuous demand,--as he mentioned the name of Fabricio, and uttered the words, 'Son of a husbandman,'--you should have seen how the eyes of all the nobles lighted up with fury. Each of them vomited fire and flame against the audacious groundling; and with one voice they all insisted, that his death beneath the cudgels of their domestics alone could expiate the vile affront he had offered to their family by the proposal of so scandalous an union. However, on mature consideration, the offended members of the diet agreed to spare the culprit's life; but, in order to teach him that first and far most useful knowledge--of himself, they resolved to play him such a trick as he should have reason to remember while he lived. "Various were the schemes proposed: the one on which they at last decided was as follows. Hippolita was to feign a sensibility for the passion of Fabricio; and, under pretence of consoling her unhappy lover for the refusal which Don Thomaso would have given to his proposal for her hand, she was to make an assignation for some particular evening to receive him at the castle; where, at the moment of his introduction by the Moorish female, the friends of the signor would surprise him with the waiting-maid, and compel him to espouse her. "The sister of Xaral at first inclined to favour this piece of rascality; she even joined in thinking that her reputation demanded of her to consider as an insult the addresses of a person in a station so inferior to her own. But these haughty feelings soon yielded to others more gentle, prompted by pity; or rather, love suddenly vanquished all pride of heart in the bosom of Hippolita. "From that moment, she looked on all things with a different eye. The obscure origin of Fabricio now appeared to her more than compensated by a nobility of disposition; and she perceived in him but a cavalier worthy of her tenderest affection. Remark again, Signor Student, and with all due admiration, how prodigious are the changes which this passion can effect: the very girl who yesterday imagined that a monarch's heir scarce merited the honour of possessing her, to-day is all enamoured of a ploughman's son, and is flattered by pretensions which before she had regarded as disgraceful. Far therefore from assisting her brother in his purposed revenge, and yielding to the new-born passion which now reigned supreme within her soul, Hippolita entered into secret correspondence with Fabricio, by means of her Moorish attendant, who frequently of an evening introduced the gallant into the cottage. Thus baffled in his design, Don Thomaso soon became suspicious of the truth; and watching his sister, he was convinced by his own eyes that, instead of fulfilling the wishes of her relations, she had betrayed them. [Illustration: Hippolita's Moorish servant admits Fabricio]