It has not gone unnoticed by students of Cervantes's literary production that a great many of his characters appear in pairs, something that is frequently the case not only in the Novelas ejemplares but also in other Cervantine texts. I am referring to characters who either appear together from the very start, or who, in the course of events, become an inseparable pair, difficult to disassociate from each other. The following are some examples of such characters: Don Quijote and Sancho, the priest and the barber, the housekeeper and niece, Marcela and Grisóstomo, the two Benedictine monks who appear in Chapter 8 of Don Quijote, Part I; Persiles and Sigismunda, etc. In the Novelas ejemplares, as is immediately obvious, the list is extensive and, on occasion, anticipated by the very titles of the stories themselves (Rinconete y Cortadillo [Rinconete and Cortadillo], Las dos doncellas [The Two Damsels], Novela y coloquio que pasó entre Cipión y Berganza [Novel and Dialogue that Took Place Between Cipión and Berganza]) but, most significantly, this phenomenon is present in almost all of them: Ricardo and Mahamut, Carriazo and Avendaño, don Juan de Gamboa and don Antonio de Isunza… This kind of character presentation extends right down to some very minor figures who are not even given names and whose role in the novelas is sometimes quite insignificant. This preference for duality, which is clearly evidenced in the way in which many of the characters are presented, is also visible in other aspects of the novelas, such as the structure, as is the case in La señora Cornelia (Lady Cornelia) whose central monologues – those of Cornelia and Lorenzo –, as Peter Dunn has shown, divide the action into two parts, and whose dénouement is complicated by a final obstacle resulting from the division in the action: don Juan, don Antonio and don Lorenzo journey towards Ferrara, while doña Cornelia and the housekeeper (ama) make their way to Piova. It is even more obvious in Las dos doncellas.