Doña Magdalena returned the letter, after reading it, to Quijada, saying sadly that he would be obliged to set out that afternoon or the next day at latest, to which Quijada answered irritably that he saw no need to wait until the afternoon when on the Emperor's service, and that he would start at once. And he gave his orders so quickly, and so expeditious was everyone in executing them, that two hours later, at five in the morning, Quijada and his people were all ready to set out. Jeromín came to kiss his hand with eyes full of tears; but shaking him roughly by the shoulders Quijada told him "to keep those tears for when he confessed his sins, that only at the feet of a confessor it became men to cry." Ashamed, the boy swallowed his tears, and then Quijada, thinking that he had been over-severe, gave him his hand to be kissed, making the sign of the cross on his forehead, and promised him the suit of Milanese armour the first time he should break a lance in public. Luis Quijada made the journey from Villagarcia to Laredo in three days and a half, according to the letter he wrote himself to the Princess's secretary, Juan Vázguez, on the 6th of October. "Illustrious Sir, I arrived here from Villagarcia in three days and a half, with great difficulty, as I could not find posts or animals to hire." And further, he adds, "Nothing more occurs to me to say except that it does nothing but rain, that the roads are bad, and the lodgings worse. God keep us; we shall have work, but not so much as I have gone through this journey. I tell your Honour the truth, I have never passed through worse or greater dangers, because I could already see myself knocking off the tops of thirty peaks, as a mule fell with me across a wide gap, and if it had been to the left, I should have had a still worse fall. From Bilbao, 6th of October, 1556, sent from Laredo.— LUIS QUIJADA." Luis Quijada then met those three august ruins the Emperor and his two sisters, the widowed Queens of Hungary and France, in Laredo, who, despoiled of everything, and weary of acting great parts in the world's drama, were come to die in the peace of the Lord, each one in a different corner of Spain.