"When I was seventeen years old, King Philip suddenly issued a new decree against all the Catalan Moors. We were banished from the kingdom with such goods and chattels as we could carry on our bodies. We must leave our houses within three days, under pain of death, and go, under escort, to the place of embarkation. Every Christian who harbored a Moor would be sent to the galleys for six years. "We were ruined. However, my father and I concealed about our persons such gold as we could carry, and we left our home without a complaint. They promised to take us to Africa, the home of our ancestors. Thereupon we prayed to the God of our fathers to take us once more for his faithful children. "They allowed us on the journey to resume our former costumes, which had been preserved in our families for a whole century, and to chant our prayers in our own language, which we had not forgotten; for, in spite of the decrees, we used no other among ourselves. "We were packed on the state galleys like sheep, but were no sooner on board than they called upon us to pay for our passage. The majority had nothing. They insisted that the rich should pay for the poor. "My father, seeing that they cast into the sea those who could find no one to help them, paid without regret for all those who were on our ship; but when they saw that he had nothing left, they tossed him into the sea with the rest!" At this point the Moorish woman stopped. She did not weep, but her breast was heaving with sobs. "Execrable hounds of Spaniards! Poor Moors!" muttered the marquis. "Alas!" he added, as if warned by a melancholy glance from Lucilio, "France has done no better; the Regent treated them just the same way!" "Finding myself alone in the world," continued Mercedes, "without a sou, and deprived of all I loved, I tried to follow my poor father; they prevented me. I was pretty. The commander of the galley wanted me for a slave. But God unloosed the tempest, and they had to give all their thought to struggling against it. Several vessels sank, thousands of Moors perished with their persecutors. The galley upon which we were was hurled by the storm on the coast of France, and was dashed to pieces near a place of which I have never learned the name. "I was washed upon the shore amid the dead and dying; that was my salvation. I dragged myself among the rocks, and there, drenched to the skin and utterly exhausted, having carefully concealed myself, for I had no strength to go farther, I slept for the first time for many days and nights. "When I awoke the storm was at an end. It was quite warm. I was alone. The wretched ship lay off the shore, the dead bodies on the beach. I was hungry, but I had strength enough to walk. "I left the shore as quickly as I could, fearing to encounter Spaniards there, and walked toward the mountains, begging bread, water and lodging. I was received very coldly; my costume made the peasants suspicious.