The name of this beautiful young lady who went to such lengths for her heart's assuring was Doña Beatrice de Espinosa; and the name of her father was Don Gonzalo de Espinosa y Guevra--who was a Spanish rich merchant who came to make himself still richer by his buyings and his sellings in New Spain. Being arrived here, he took up his abode in a fine dwelling in the quarter of San Pablo, in the very street that now is called the Street of the Burned Woman because of what presently happened there; and if that street was called by some other name before that cruel happening I do not know what it was.
Doña Beatrice was as beautiful, Señor, as the full moon and the best of the stars put together; and she was more virtuous than she was beautiful; and she was just twenty years old. Therefore all the young gentlemen of the City immediately fell in love with her; and great numbers of the richest and the noblest of them--their parents, or other suitable persons, making the request for them--asked her father's permission to wed her: so that Doña Beatrice might have had any one of twenty good husbands, had any one of them been to her mind. However--being a lady very particular in the matter of husbands--not one of them was to her liking: wherefore her father did as she wanted him to do and refused them all.
But, on a day, matters went differently. At a great ball given by the Viceroy in the Palace Doña Beatrice found what her heart had been waiting for: and this was a noble Italian young gentleman who instantly--as all the others had done--fell in love with her; and with whom--as she never before had done with anybody--she instantly fell in love. The name of this young gentleman was Don Martín Scipoli; and he was the Marqués de Pinamonte y Frantescello; and he was as handsome as he was lovable, and of a most jealous nature, and as quarrelsome as it was possible for anybody to be. Therefore, as I have said, Señor, Doña Beatrice at once fell in love with him with all the heart of her; and Don Martín at once fell in love with her also: and so violently that his jealousy of all her other lovers set off his quarrelsomeness at such a rate that he did nothing--in his spare time, when he was not making love to Doña Beatrice--but affront and anger them, so that he might have the pleasure of finding them at the point of his sword.