monastery which was in those mountains, where I would be cured of my hurts and even defended, if they sought to seize me again. In a word I followed him, as I have told you, in the desire to learn what my friend Timbrio's fortune had wrought; he, as I afterwards learned, had escaped with some wounds, and followed over the mountain another road different from that I took; he stopped at the port of Rosas, where he remained some days, seeking to learn what fate had been mine, and at last, not learning any news, he went away in a ship and came with a favouring wind to the great city of Naples. I returned to Barcelona, and there furnished myself with what I needed; and then, being healed of my wounds, I resumed my journey, and, no misadventure happening to me, came to Naples, where I found Timbrio ill; and such was the joy we both felt at seeing each other, that I have not the power to describe it properly to you now. There we told each other of our lives, and of all that had happened to us up to that moment; but this my pleasure was all watered by seeing Timbrio not so well as I could wish, nay rather so ill, and with so strange a disease, that if I had not come at that moment, I might have come in time to perform the rites of his death, and not to celebrate the joys of seeing him. After he had learnt from me all he wanted, with tears in his eyes he said to me: "Ah, friend Silerio! I truly think that Heaven seeks to add to the load of my misfortunes, so that, by giving me health through your safety, I may remain every day under greater obligation to serve you." These words of Timbrio's moved me; but, as they seemed to me courtesies so little used between us, they filled me with wonder. And not to weary you in telling you word for word what I replied to him, and what he answered further, I shall only tell you that Timbrio, unhappy man, was in love with a notable lady of that city, whose parents were Spaniards, though she had been born in Naples. Her name was Nisida, and her beauty so great, that I make bold to say that nature summed up in her its highest perfections; and in her modesty and beauty were so united, that what the one enflamed the other chilled, and the desires her grace raised to the loftiest heaven, her modest propriety brought down to the lowest depths of earth. From this cause Timbrio was as poor in hope as rich in thoughts; and above all failing in health, and in the plight of ending his days without disclosing his state--such was the fear and reverence he had conceived for the fair Nisida. But after I had fully learnt his disease, and had seen Nisida, and considered the quality and nobility of her parents, I determined to waive for him property, life and honour, and more, if more I had in my power to bestow. And so I employed an artifice, the strangest heard or read of up till now; which was, that I decided to dress up as a buffoon, and with a guitar to enter Nisida's house, which, as her parents were, as I have said,