The mayor and mayoress went out of the room, and Maria, as soon as she
found herself alone, went to look at herself in a mirror that hung
there; and when she saw herself bald she lost the patience she had had
until then, and groaned with rage and struck herself, and even tried
to wrench off her ears, which appeared to her now outrageously large,
although they were not so in reality. She stamped upon her hair and
cursed herself for having ever consented to lose it, without
remembering her father, and just as if she had no father at all. But
as it is a quality of human nature to accept what cannot be altered,
poor angry Maria calmed down little by little, and she picked up the
hair from the ground and bound it together and braided it into great
ropes, not without kissing it and lamenting over it many times.

The mayor and the mayoress returned, he with the money and she with
the every-day clothes of Maria, who undressed and folded her white
robe in a kerchief, put on her old gown, hid herself with her shawl to
the eyes, and walked, moaning, to the house of the Moor, without
noticing that the man with the hood over his head was following behind
her, and that when she, in a moment of forgetfulness, lowered her
shawl through the habit she had of displaying her tresses, her bald
head could be plainly seen. The Moor received the five hundred
_maravedis_ with that good-will with which money is always received,
and told Maria to bring Juan Lanas to his house to stay there so long
as there was any risk in the cure. Maria went to fetch the old man,
and kept silence as to her shorn head so as not to grieve him, and
whilst Juan remained the physician's guest, Maria durst not leave her
home except after nightfall, and then well enveloped. This, however,
did not hinder her being followed by the muffled-up man.

One evening the Moor told her in secret that the next morning he would