Things sometimes happen in this world, that if people were beforehand to devise or project them, they never could succeed in so doing, and so from that and their rarity they pass as apocryphal, and are not believed to be as true as they are, and it is necessary to help people's belief by swearing to the truth, or, at least, it requires that the relator should be a person of good credit, although, for my part, I am of opinion that it is best not to tell them at all, according to the advice in the old Castilian adage,—
"Very wonderful things
Should never be told,
For it is not every one
That can enter into them."

Our pilgrims had not been long in the inn when Bartholomew came and said, "Make haste, sir, and come and see the most extraordinary sight you ever saw in your life!" He said this in such a scared and frightened manner, that, thinking they were going to see some very strange thing, they followed him, and in a part of the house at some distance from that in which the pilgrims and the ladies were lodged, they saw through some matting an apartment entirely hung with black, the murky darkness of which prevented them from seeing distinctly what was in it. Whilst they were looking at it, an old man, also dressed in black, came up to them, and said, "Gentlemen, if you wish to see the Lady Ruperta without her seeing you, I will contrive it so that you shall be gratified; in about two hours after midnight you will have an opportunity of seeing what will surprise you, both as to her beauty and behaviour."

"Sir," said Periander, "our servant, that you see here, brought us to see a wonder, but we have seen nothing yet, except a room hung with black, which is not wonderful at all."

"If you will return hither at the hour I have named," replied the man in black, "you shall see what will surprise you; for you must know that in this apartment lodges the Lady Ruperta, who was, not quite a year ago, the wife of Earl Lambert, of Scotland, which marriage cost him his life, and has placed her in danger of losing it every hour; for Claudio Rubicon, a gentleman of very good family in Scotland, whose great wealth and ancient lineage rendered him proud and overbearing, and he being also of a warm temperament, loved my mistress when she was a maiden; but she, whether she disliked him or not, at any rate, rejected him, and showed her disdain of his addresses by marrying the earl my master. This hasty act of hers seemed as if it was a proof of contempt and aversion to Rubicon, as if the fair Ruperta had not parents who fixed and directed her choice, and, added to which, the years of the husband chosen for her, were far better suited to her own; and it is no doubt desirable that this should be considered in a marriage, although it is good for the husband to have the advantage in point of age. Now Rubicon was a widower, and far from young, and he had a son of about twenty or one-and-twenty years old, a young man extremely amiable, and of a much better disposition than his father, indeed, had it been he who had offered himself, my master might be still alive, and my mistress happier.
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