Many candidates arrive,--the old and ugly and decrepit, leaving their homes, and braving every danger,--to claim the reward of beauty. Among them, but surpassing all in charms, Angelica and Medoro appear. Angelica is described with the greatest minuteness,--brow, eyes, nose, ears, and teeth are all depicted. But more beautiful than this sort of Mosaic portraiture are the verses that portray her companion. "Scarce twenty years had seen the lovely boy, As ringlet locks and yellow down proclaim; Fair was his height, and grave to gazers seemed Those eyes, which where they turned with love and softness beamed." The judges decide in favour of Angelica, and she and her husband are crowned. But their beauty gives rise to many a passion in the bosoms of others; and various are the incidents, brought about by enchantments and other means, which for a time disunite the beautiful pair, who, at last, discover their mistakes, and the poem ends with their happiness. This work possesses little merit, except here and there in short passages; but it is a singular specimen of Lope's power of composition, amidst circumstances so foreign to the subject in hand. [Sidenote: 1590. Ætat. 28.] On his return from the Armada, he quitted the career of arms, and entered the service, first, of the marquis de Malpica, and soon after of the count of Lemos, leaving him only on occasion of his second marriage to donna Juana de Guardio, a lady of Madrid, of whom he thus speaks:-- "Who could have thought that I should find a wife, When from that war I reached my native shore, Sweet for the love which ruled her life, Dear for the sorrows which she bore? Such love which could endure through cold and hot, Could only have been mine or Jacob's lot."[94]