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Indiana University Studies 
thus revealing her jealousy of her; he denies this. Lisardo 
tells Otavio to have everything ready for him to enter the 
tourney, with blue colors, and also to be ready himself to rep- 
resent a prince of Portugal, acting as his second. 
In the tourney, in the third act, a knight in white, who is 
Laura herself, has been the most successful, and after her, 
Lisardo, as the “blue knight”. Diana is the only one who sus- 
pects the identity of the “white knight”. Otavio tells Laura 
who Lisardo is and she, to be sure that he loves her, leads him 
on to the point of feeling just sure enough of her to be wor- 
ried. Diana and Lucela, who have been faithful pupils in 
“aborrecer a los bomb res”, now want lessons in “quererlos”, 
and both write notes to Laura asking her permission to love 
Alejandro and Agusto, respectively. Julio is in great distress 
because he finds himself in love with a man, Alejandro, be- 
cause of the bewitched ribbon, and Lisardo gives him a rem- 
edy. Arnaldo is ready for the decision to be made, and says 
that, in the absence of both the “white” and “blue” knights, 
Alejandro, coming in third, is the lucky one. Lisardo steps 
up as the “blue knight” (proving the same by the blue ribbon 
from Laura) and Agusto, thinking to get ahead of him, says 
he is the “white knight”, whereupon Laura tells them all that 
she was that one herself. Alejandro objects first that Lisardo 
has not written the required book, and he replies that he pre- 
sents Laura as a living book on feminine praise; he then ob- 
jects that Lisardo, acting as his go-between, betrayed him, 
which Lisardo answers by saying that he did use the ribbon 
as he had promised to do, but on Julio instead of Laura. 
Arnaldo offers Diana and Lucela, respectively, to Alejandro and 
Agusto, and Laura ends the play, saying: 
Yo me he rendido, Senado; 
Y pues vivir no es posible 
Sin hombres, y yo me caso, 
No pier da La vengadora 
De las mujeres , pues tanto 
Cuanto aborrecerlos quise, 
Tanto los estimo y amo. 90 
Examination of this play shows the outside structure to be 
very much the same as that of El desden con el desden. Arnal- 
do, Laura’s brother, plays the counterpart of the Count of 
Barcelona, Diana’s father. The three suitors for Laura’s 
90 La vengadora. Act III, scene xix. 
