Having read so far, you must now know that Juan Lanas, the blind man,
with the change of district and dwelling did not change his judgment
and if he was crack-brained at San Garcia, he remained crack-brained
at Toledo, consuming in this resort his money upon worthless drugs and
quacks which did not cure his blindness and impoverished him more and
more every day, so that if his daughter had not been so dexterous with
her fingers in making and broidering garments of linen, wool, and
silk, I promise you that this miserable Juan would have had to go for
more than four Sundays without a clean shirt to put on or a mouthful
to eat, unless he had begged it from door to door.

The years passed by to find Maria every day more beautiful, and her
father every day more blind and more desirous to see, until his
affliction and trouble took such forcible possession of his breast and
mind, that Maria saw as clear as daylight that if her father did not
recover his sight, he would die of grief. Maria thereupon straightway
took her father and led him to the house of an Arabian physician of
great learning who dwelt at Toledo, and told the Moor to see if there
were any cure for the old man's sight. The Arabian examined and
touched Juan, and made this and that experiment with him, and
everything prospered, in that the physician swore great oaths by the
heel-bone of Mohammed that there was a complete certainty of curing
Juan and making him to see his daughter again, if only he, the
physician, were paid for the cure with five hundred _maravedis_ all in
gold. A sad termination for such a welcome beginning, for the two
unhappy creatures, Juan and Maria, had neither _maravedi_ nor
_cuarto_ in the money box! So they went thence all downcast, and Maria
never ceased praying to his Holiness Saint John and his Holiness Saint
James (the patron saint of Spain) to repair to their assistance in