[128] There is some little obscurity about this important personage (st. 71, 671, and elsewhere); but she was named Urraca, (st. 1550,) and belonged to the class of persons technically called _Alcahuetas_, or “Go-betweens”; a class which, from the seclusion of women in Spain, and perhaps from the influence of Moorish society and manners, figures largely in the early literature of the country, and sometimes in the later. The Partidas (Part. VII. Tít. 22) devotes two laws to them; and the “Tragicomedia of Celestina,” who is herself once called Trota-conventos, (end of Act. II.,) is their chief monument. Of their activity in the days of the Archpriest a whimsical proof is given in the extraordinary number of odious and ridiculous names and epithets accumulated on them in st. 898-902. [129] St. 72 etc., 88 etc., 95 etc. In the next of his adventures, a false friend deceives him and carries off his lady. But still he is not discouraged.[130] He feels himself to be drawn on by his fate, like the son of a Moorish king, whose history he then relates; and, after some astrological ruminations, declares himself to be born under the star of Venus, and inevitably subject to her control. Another failure follows; and then Love comes in person to visit him and counsels him in a series of fables, which are told with great ease and spirit. The poet answers gravely. He is offended with Don Amor for his falsehood, charges him with being guilty, either by implication or directly, of all the seven deadly sins, and fortifies each of his positions with an appropriate apologue.[131] [130] When the affair is over, he says quaintly, “_El_ comiò la vianda, è a _mi_ fiso rumiar.” [131] St. 119, 142 etc., 171 etc., 203 etc. Such discoursing as this last passage affords on the seven deadly sins is common in the French Fabliaux, and the English reader finds a striking specimen of it in the “Persone’s Tale” of Chaucer.