Basquelands in Spain, 1650s.  

  There lived a nobleman who possessed a charmed coat made of lavish quilts of silk, each square a lustrous color, each holding a special meaning and power.  The coat, they say, was sewn

together by the gyspies who lived by the mire inland from the sea.  

  The nobelman was outwardly kind but inwardly he was never sincere; he never did a favor selflessly without expecting a good reward, or coming back to claim such a reward

when he deemed fit.  He romanced the gypsies with gifts of grain and meat from the village brought to them by night in a carriage.  

  A young woman secretly became engage to his cousin, a laborer with poor eyesight who hadn't many worldly goods and couldn't afford all of the comforts of life that the nobleman was able offer.  Using his status and power, he demanded that woman break the betrothal to his cousin and marry him.  When she refused, her father sold her to the nobleman in marriage for a high price.  

  From: The Man in the Frockcoat  2002