No monk can do better than that, for at those times I eat nothing at all." "If you said your prayers as often as you fast, you would be in a good way," observed Don John.
"I do, sir.

I say a short grace before and after eating.

Why have you come to Madrid, my lord?
Do you not know that Madrid is the worst, the wickedest, the dirtiest, vilest, and most damnable habitation devised by man for the corruption of humanity?
Especially in the month of November?
Has your lordship any reasonable reason for this unreason of coming here, when the streets are full of mud, and men's hearts are packed like saddle-bags with all the sins they have accumulated since Easter and mean to unload at Christmas?
Even your old friends are shocked to see so young and honest a prince in such a place!" "My old friends?
Who ?" "I saw Saint John the Conqueror graciously wave his hand to a most highly respectable old nobleman this afternoon, and the nobleman was so much shocked that he could not stir an arm to return the salutation! His legs must have done something, though, for he seemed to kick his own horse up from the ground under him.

The shock must have been terrible.
As for me, I laughed aloud, which made both the old nobleman and Don Julius Caesar of Austria exceedingly angry.

Get before me, Don Fadrique! I am afraid of the terror of the Moors,--and no shame to me either! A poor dwarf, against a man who tears armies to shreds,--and sends scullery maids into hysterics! What is a poor crippled jester compared with a powerful scullery maid or an army of heathen Moriscoes?
Give me that sword, Fadrique, or I am a dead man!" But Don John was laughing good-naturedly.
"So it was you, Adonis?
I might have-known your voice, I should think." "No one ever knows my voice, sir.