overlooked among the promotions: his madness, however, is not without its advantage; seeing that he at present imagines himself to be Archbishop of Toledo. And what if he deceive himself? His pleasure is none the less: indeed, I think, that he is so much the more to be envied; since his error is a golden dream, which will only end with his life, and he will not be called to account in the other world for the application of his revenues in this. "The next in rotation is a ward, whom his guardian declared to be insane, that he might have the uncontrolled use of his property: the poor youth has become really mad from rage at his unjust confinement. After the minor, comes a schoolmaster, who lost his wits in search of the _paulo post futurum_ of the Greek verb; and, then again, we have a merchant, whose reason was shipwrecked with a vessel that belonged to him, although it had stood the shock of two bankruptcies which had before threatened to engulph him. "The person who is lodged in the next room is the ancient captain Zanubio, a Neapolitan cavalier, who came to establish himself in Madrid, and whom jealousy has settled where he is: you shall hear his history. "He delighted in a youthful spouse, the lady Aurora, whom he guarded as the apple of his eye. His house was absolutely inaccessible to all mankind; and Aurora never left it but for mass, always accompanied by her aged Tithon, or to breathe with him the pure air of the pleasant fields, at an estate near Alcantara, whither he sometimes led her. Despite his vigilance, however, she had been perceived at church by the cavalier Don Garcia Pacheco, who loved her from the instant that he saw her: he was an enterprising youth, and not unworthy the attention of a pretty woman whom Fortune had badly matched. [Illustration: Zanubio and Aurora at church, observed by Don Garcia]