Como dise Aristotiles, cosa es verdadera, el mundo por dos cosas trabaja: por la primera por aver mantenençia; la otra cosa era por aver juntamjento con fenbra plasentera. Sylo dixiese de mjo, seria de culpar; diselo grand filosofo, non so yo de rebtar; delo que dise el sabio non deuemos dubdar, que por obra se prueva el sabio e su fablar. Next the Archpriest, confessing himself to be a man of sin like the rest of us, relates how he was once in love with a Lady of Quality (too wary to be trapped by gifts) who rebuffed his messenger by saying that men were deceivers ever, and by quoting from ‘Ysopete’ an adaptation of the fable concerning the mountain in labour. The form ‘Ysopete’ suggests that the Archpriest used some French version of Æsop or Phaedrus, though not that of Marie de France, in whose translation (as edited by Warnke) this particular fable does not appear. Undaunted by this check, the Archpriest does not lose his equanimity, reflects how greatly Solomon was in the right in saying that all is vanity, and determines to speak no ill of the coy dame, since women are, after all, the most delightful of creatures:— mucho seria villano e torpe pajes sy dela muger noble dixiese cosa rrefes, ca en muger loçana, fermosa e cortes, todo bien del mundo e todo plaser es. A less squeamish beauty—_otra non santa_—attracted the fickle Archpriest, who wrote for her a _troba cazurra_, and employed Ferrand García as go-between. García courted the facile fair on his own account, and left Juan Ruiz to swear (as he does roundly) at a second fiasco. However, the Archpriest philosophically remarks that man cannot escape his fate, and illustrates this by telling how a Moorish king named Alcarás called in five astrologists to cast his son’s horoscope: all five predicted different catastrophes, and all five proved to be right. Comically enough, Juan Ruiz remembers at this point that he is a priest, disclaims all sympathy with fatalistic doctrine, and smugly adds that he believes in predestination only so far as it is compatible with the Catholic faith. But he forgets his orthodoxy as conveniently as he remembered it, rejoices that he was born under the sign of Venus (a beautifying planet which not only keeps young men young, but takes years off the old), and, since even the hardest pear ripens at last, he hopes for better luck. Yet he is disappointed in his attempt to beguile another Lady of Quality who proves to be (so to say) a _bonâ fide_ holder for value, and the recital of this third misadventure ends with the fable of the thief and the dog.