“Señor, I have no more to tell you than that from the moment when, through heaven’s will and our being near neighbours, I first saw Doña Clara, your daughter and my lady, from that instant I made her the mistress of my will, and if yours, my true lord and father, offers no impediment, this very day she shall become my wife. For her I left my father’s house, and for her I assumed this disguise, to follow her whithersoever she may go, as the arrow seeks its mark or the sailor the polestar. She knows nothing more of my passion than what she may have learned from having sometimes seen from a distance that my eyes were filled with tears. You know already, señor, the wealth and noble birth of my parents, and that I am their sole heir; if this be a sufficient inducement for you to venture to make me completely happy, accept me at once as your son; for if my father, influenced by other objects of his own, should disapprove of this happiness I have sought for myself, time has more power to alter and change things, than human will.”