"'In vain do you intreat me,' replied Zarata: 'I love her but too dearly, as I have told you; but, Mendoza, your happiness shall never be the price of mine.' 'And the happiness of Donna Theodora,' said Don Fabricio, 'shall that then count for nothing? Let not false delicacy weigh with us now: her passion for yourself has ended all my hopes. What though, for me, you shunned those fatal eyes, to lead in distant lands a life of woe,--what would it serve me now? She loves me not, and never will; Heaven reserved that bliss for you alone. From the moment that she saw you, her heart declared for you; nature prompted the emotion: in a word, you alone can render her happy. Receive then the heart she offers with her hand; crown her desires and your own; leave me to my fate; and make not three persons miserable, when the wretchedness of one alone is all that destiny requires.'"
Asmodeus was here obliged to suspend his narration, and listen to the Student, who said to him: "Well, all that you tell me is sufficiently surprising; but are there really such amiable people upon earth? I never met within this nether world but friends who strive, not for such mistresses as you depict the Donna Theodora, but for the arrantest coquettes. What! a lover to renounce the being he adores, by whom his love is shared, and all lest he should render some poor friend unhappy? That may do well for some romancer's pen, which fain would picture men the creatures they should be, for fear of telling them the things they are." "I own, with you," Asmodeus replied, "the virtue that I tell you of is rare; but still, my dear Cleophas, it exists; not in romances only, but in the principles of man's own nature. It is true that, since the deluge, I have seen but two examples of the like, and this is one; but, let us return to our history.
"The two friends continued still their amicable strife, and, as each was still unwilling to yield the palm of generosity to the other, their amorous sentiments remained suspended, during several days. They ceased to talk of Donna Theodora, each seemed afraid to breathe her very name; but, while Friendship triumphed over Love in the city of Valencia, Love, as though he would revenge the insult offered to his power, reigned with tyranny without its walls, and was there obeyed without scruple.