Of the Aduana De Santo Domingo

This gentleman who for love's sake, Senor, conquered his coldness and his laziness and became all fire and energy, was named Don Juan Gutierrez Rubin de Celis. He was a caballero of the Order of Santiago -- some say that he wore also the habit of Calatrava -- and the colonel of the regiment of the Tres Villas. He was of a lovable nature, and ostentatious and arrogant, and in all his ways dilatory and apathetic to the very last degree. So great were his riches that not even he himself knew the sum of them: as you will understand when I tell you that on an occasion of state -- it was the entry into the City in the year 1716 of the new Viceroy, the Marques de Valero -- pearls to the value of thirty thousand pesos were used in the mere trimming of his casacon.[3]

Being of an age to take part so nobly in that noble ceremony, he must have been a gentleman well turned of forty, Senor, when the matters whereof I now am telling you occurred: of which the beginning -- and also the middle and the ending, because everything hinged upon it -- was his falling most furiously in love with a very beautiful young lady; and his falling in love in that furious fashion was the very first sign of energy that in all his lifetime, until that moment, he had shown. The name of this beautiful young lady with whom he fell in love so furiously was Dona Sara de Garcia Somera y Acuna; and she was less than half as old as he was, but possessed of a very sensible nature that made her do more thinking than is done usually by young ladies; and she was of a noble house, and a blood relative of the Viceroy's: for which reason the Viceroy -- who by that time was Don Juan de Acuna, Marques de Casafuerte -- was much interested in the whole affair.