We will continue the interview of those four persons, as if they had all spoken the same language, and as if Lucilio, quick as he was with his pencil, had not been incapable of speaking any language. XVI The Moorish woman began thus: "Mario, my beloved, say to this kind-hearted nobleman that I speak Spanish very little, and French still less; I will tell my story to his _scrivener_, and he can read it. "I am the daughter of a poor farmer of Catalonia. It was in Catalonia that the few Moors who were spared by the Inquisition lived at peace, hoping that they would be allowed to remain there and earn their living by toil, since we had taken no part in the recent wars which were so disastrous to our brothers in the other provinces of Spain. "My father's name was Yesid in Arabic and Juan in Spanish; I was baptized by _aspersion_ like the others, my Christian name was Mercedes, my Moorish name Ssobyha.[14] "I am now thirty years old. I was thirteen when we began to receive secret warnings that we were to be stripped and driven from the country in our turn. "Even before I was born the terrible King Philip II. had ordered that all Moors must learn the Castilian language within three years, and must no longer speak, read or write in Arabic, openly or secretly; that all contracts made in that language should be void; that all our books should be burned; that we should exchange our national costumes for the dress worn by Christians; that the Moorish women should go out without veils, with faces uncovered; that we should have no national festivals or songs or dances; that we should lay aside our family and individual names and take Christian names; that no Moor, male or female, should bathe in the future, and that the baths in the houses should be destroyed. "Thus they insulted us even in the decency of our manners and the health of our bodies! My parents submitted. When they saw that it availed them nothing, and that they were persecuted solely because of their money, they thought only of collecting and concealing all that they could, intending to fly when they should again be in danger of death. "By dint of hard work and patience they amassed a little hoard. It was to prevent the necessity of my begging, they said, as so many others had had to do who had allowed themselves to be taken by surprise. But it was written that I should ask alms like all the rest. "We were still happy enough, notwithstanding the humiliation they heaped upon us. Our Spanish lords did not love us; but, as they realized that we alone in Spain were able and willing to till their lands, they asked their king to spare us.