reader must not doubt; for no memoir exists, or personal biography,
that is so trebly authenticated by proofs and attestations direct and
collateral. From the archives of the Royal Marine at Seville, from the
autobiography or the heroine, from contemporary chronicles, and from
several official sources scattered in and out of Spain, some of them
ecclesiastical, the amplest proofs have been drawn, and may yet be
greatly extended, of the extraordinary events here recorded. M. de
Ferrer, a Spaniard of much research, and originally incredulous as to
the facts, published about seventeen years ago a selection from the
leading documents, accompanied by his _palinode_ as to their accuracy.
His materials have been since used for the basis of more than one
narrative, not inaccurate, in French, German and Spanish journals of
high authority. It is seldom the case that French writers err by
prolixity. They _have_ done so in this case. The present narrative,
which contains no sentence derived from any foreign one, has the great
advantage of close compression; my own pages, after equating the size,
being as 1 to 3 of the shortest continental form. In the mode of
narration, I am vain enough to flatter myself that the reader will find
little reason to hesitate between us. Mine at least, weary nobody;
which is more than can be always said for the continental versions.

On a night in the year 1592, (but which night is a secret liable to 365
answers,) a Spanish '_son of somebody_,' [Footnote: _i.e._ 'Hidalgo']
in the fortified town of St. Sebastian, received the disagreeable
intelligence from a nurse, that his wife had just presented him with a
daughter. No present that the poor misjudging lady could possibly have
made him was so entirely useless for any purpose of his. He had three
daughters already, which happened to be more by 2+1 than _his_
reckoning assumed as a reasonable allowance of daughters. A
supernumerary son might have been stowed away; but daughters in excess