Tenth muse.: An essay in commemotion of the three hundredth anniversary of the birth of Sor Juana Ines.
The room was rude and probably a little damp, because of the altitude and the prodigious rains sustained on the sierra, but it was also substantial, thick-walled in adobe and floored with the great rough bricks universally used in the period. Heavy, hand-hewn beams supported the weight of the sloping roof, made snug by countless overlapping tiles. The gloom of the rude chamber was candle-spotted, revealing, if dimly, its meagre but heavy furnishings; and a hearth fire must have contributed additional brightening, since it was nearing the very coldest season in the highlands, November. It was November 12 and approaching midnight in the Year of Grace, 1651.