The girl began to pull and tear at her hair,hitting herself so hard it was like she was possessed.The young man was courageous,and he consoled her,telling her not to worry,that he could handle everything.I was all ears,with my mouth full of kid,and when I heard that those braggers were there I thought I was going to die of fear.And I would have,too,but since my gullet was closed off,my soul didn't find the door standing open,and it went back down.
The two Cids came in,and as soon as they saw their sister and the bawd they shouted,"Here they are!At last we have them.Now they'll die!"
I was so frightened by their shouts that I fell to the floor,and when I hit I ejected the goat that was choking me.The two women got behind the young man like chicks under a hen's wing running from a hawk.Brave and graceful,he pulled out his sword and went at the brothers so furiously that their fright turned them into statues.The words froze in their mouths,and the swords in their sheaths.The young man asked them what they wanted or what they were looking for,and as he was talking he grabbed one of them and took away his sword.Then he pointed this sword at his eyes,while he held his own sword at the other one's eyes.At every movement he made with the swords,they trembled like leaves.When the old woman and the sister saw the two Rolands so subdued,they went up and disarmed them.The innkeeper came in at the noise we were all making (I had gotten up and had one of them by the beard).
It all seemed to me like the gentle bulls in my town:boys,when they see them,run away;but they gradually get more and more daring,and when they see they aren't as fierce as they look,they lose all their fear and go right up and throw all kinds of garbage on them.When I saw that those scarecrows weren't as ferocious as they looked,I plucked up my courage and attacked them more bravely than my earlier terror had allowed.
"What's this?"asked the innkeeper."Who dares to cause such an uproar in my house?"
The women,the gentleman,and I began shouting that they were thieves who had been following us to rob us.When the innkeeper saw them without any weapons,and at our mercy,he said,"Thieves in my house!"
He grabbed hold of them and helped us put them in a cellar,not listening to one word of their protests.Their servant came back from feeding the mules,and he asked where his masters were:the innkeeper put him in with them.He took their bags,their saddle cushions,and their portmanteaus and locked them up,and he gave us the weapons as if they belonged to him.He didn't charge us for the food so that we would sign a lawsuit he had drawn up against them.He said he was a minister of the Inquisition,and as a law officer in that district,he was condemning the three of them to the galleys for the rest of their lives,and to be whipped two hundred times around the inn.They appealed to the Chancery of Valladolid,and the good innkeeper and three of his servants took them there.
When the poor fellows thought they were before the judges,they found themselves before the Inquisitors,because the sly innkeeper had put down on the record some words they had spoken against the officials of the Holy Inquisition (an unpardonable crime).They put the brothers in dark jail cells,and they couldn't write their father or ask anyone to help them the way they had thought they could.
And there we will leave them,well guarded,to get back to our innkeeper,because we met him on the road.He told us that the Inquisitors had commanded him to have the witnesses who had signed the lawsuit appear before them.But,as a friend,he was advising us to go into hiding.The young maiden gave him a ring from her finger,begging him to arrange things so we wouldn't have to appear.He promised he would.But the thief said this to make us leave,so that if they wanted to hear witnesses they wouldn't discover his chicanery (and it wasn't his first).
In two weeks Valladolid was the scene of an auto de fe ,and I saw the three poor devils come out with other penitents,with gags in their mouths,as blasphemers who had dared speak against the ministers of the Holy Inquisition--a group of people as saintly and perfect as the justice they deal out.All three of them were wearing pointed hats and sanbenitos,and written on them were their crimes and the sentences they had been given.I was sorry to see that poor foot servant paying for something he hadn't done.But I didn't feel as much pity for the other two because they'd had so little on me.The innkeeper's sentence was carried out,with the addition of three hundred lashes apiece,so they were given five hundred and sent to the galleys where their fierce bravado melted away.
I sought out my fortune.Many times,on the street of Magdalena,I ran into my two women friends.But they never recognized me or were aware that I knew them.After a few days I saw the missionary-minded young maiden in the prisoners'cells where she earned enough to maintain her affair and herself.The old woman carried on her business in that city.
