The Life of Lazarillo of Tormes: His Fortunes and Misfortunes as Told by Himself

by Anonymous

TO THE READER

The reason, dear reader, that the Second Part of Lazarillo of Tormes is going into print is that a little book has come into my hands that touches on his life but has not one word of truth in it. Most of it tells how Lazaro fell into the sea, where he changed into a fish called a tuna. He lived in the sea for many years and married another tuna, and they had children who were fishes like their father and mother. It also tells about the wars of the tuna, in which Lazaro was the captain, and about other foolishness both ridiculous and erroneous, stupid and with no basis in truth. The person who wrote it undoubtedly wanted to relate a foolish dream or a dreamed-up foolishness.

This book, I repeat, was the prime motivation for my bringing to light this Second Part, exactly as I saw it written in some notebooks in the rogues' archives in Toledo, without adding or subtracting anything. And it is in conformity with what I heard my grandmother and my aunts tell, and on which I was weaned, by the fireside on cold winter nights. And as further evidence, they and the other neighbors would often argue over how Lazaro could have stayed under water so long (as my Second Part relates) without drowning. Some said he could have done it, others said he could not: those who said he could cited Lazaro himself, who says the water could not go into him because his stomach was full all the way up to his mouth. One good old man who knew how to swim, and who wanted to prove that it was feasible, interposed his authority and said he had seen a man who went swimming in the Tagus, and who dived and went into some caverns where he stayed from the time the sun went down until it came up again, and he found his way out by the sun's glow; and when all his friends and relatives had grown tired of weeping over him and looking for his body to give him a burial, he came out safe and sound.

The other difficulty they saw about his life was that nobody recognized that Lazaro was a man, and everyone who saw him took him for a fish. A good canon (who, since he was a very old man, spent all day in the sun with the weavers) answered that this was even more possible basing his statement on the opinion of many ancient and modern writers, including Pliny, Phaedo, Aristotle, and Albertus Magnus, who testify that in the sea there are some fish of which the males are called Tritons, and the females Nereids, and they are all called mermen: from the waist up they look exactly like men, and from the waist down they are like fish. And I say that even if this opinion were not held by such well-qualified writers, the license that the fishermen had from the Inquisitors would be a sufficient excuse for the ignorance of the Spanish people, because it would be a matter for the Inquisition if they doubted something that their lordships had consented to be shown as such.

About this point (even though it lies outside of what I am dealing with now) I will tell of something that occurred to a farmer from my region. It happened that an Inquisitor sent for him, to ask for some of his pears, which he had been told were absolutely delicious. The poor country fellow didn't know what his lordship wanted of him, and it weighed so heavily on him that he fell ill until a friend of his told him what was wanted. He jumped out of bed, ran to his garden, pulled up the tree by the roots, and sent it along with the fruit, saying that he didn't want anything at his house that would make his lordship send for him again. People are so afraid of them—and not only laborers and the lower classes, but lords and grandees—that they all tremble more than leaves on trees when a soft, gentle breeze is blowing, when they hear these names: Inquisitor, Inquisition. This is what I have wanted to inform the reader about so that he can answer when such questions are aired in his presence, and also I beg him to think of me as the chronicler and not the author of this work, which he can spend an hour of his time with. If he enjoys it, let him wait for the Third Part about the death and testament of Lazarillo, which is the best of all. And if not, I have nevertheless done my best. Vale.

I. Where Lazaro Tells about How He Left Toledo to Go to the War of Algiers

"A prosperous man who acts unwisely should not be angry when misfortune comes." I'm writing this epigram for a reason: I never had the mentality or the ability to keep myself in a good position when fortune had put me there. Change was a fundamental part of my life that remained with me both in good, prosperous times and in bad, disastrous ones. As it was, I was living as good a life as any patriarch ever had, eating more than a friar who has been invited out to dinner, drinking more than a thirsty quack doctor, better dressed than a priest, and in my pocket were two dozen pieces of silver—more reliable than a beggar in Madrid. My house was as well stocked as a beehive filled with honey, my daughter was born with the odor of saintliness about her, and I had a job that even a pew opener in the church at Toledo would have envied.

Then I heard about the fleet making ready to sail for Algiers. The news intrigued me, and like a good son I decided to follow in the footsteps of my good father Tome Gonzalez (may he rest in peace). I wanted to be an example—a model—for posterity. I didn't want to be remembered for leading that crafty blind man, or for nibbling on the bread of the stingy priest, or for serving that penniless squire, or even for calling out other people's crimes. The kind of example I wanted to be was one who would show those blind Moors the error of their ways, tear open and sink those arrogant pirate ships, serve under a valiant captain who belonged to the Order of Saint John (and I did enlist with a man like that as his valet, with the condition that everything I took from the Moors I would be able to keep, and it turned out that way). Finally, what I wanted to do was to be a model for shouting at and rousing the troops with our war cry: "Saint James be with us…. Attack, Spaniards!"

I said good-by to my adoring wife and my dear daughter. My daughter begged me not to forget to bring her back a nice Moorish boy, and my wife told me to be sure to send, by the first messenger, a slave girl to wait on her and some Barbary gold to console her while I was gone. I asked my lord the archpriest's permission, and I put my wife and daughter in his charge so he would take care of them and provide for them. He promised me he would treat them as his very own.

I left Toledo happy, proud, and content, full of high hopes—the way men are when they go to war. With me were a great number of friends and neighbors who were going on the same expedition, hoping to better their fortunes. We arrived at Murcia with the intention of going to Cartagena to embark. And there something happened me that I had no desire for. I saw that fortune had put me at the top of its whimsical wheel and with its usual swiftness had pushed me to the heights of worldly prosperity, and now it was beginning to throw me down to the very bottom.

It happened that when I went to an inn, I saw a half-man who, with all the loose and knotted threads hanging from his clothes, had more the appearance of an old goat than a man. His hat was pulled down so far you couldn't see his face, his cheek was resting on his hand, and one leg was lying on his sword, which was in a half scabbard made of strips of cloth. He had his hat cocked jauntily over one ear (there was no crown on it, so all the hot air coming out of his head could evaporate). His jacket was cut in the French style—so slashed there wasn't a piece big enough to wrap a mustard seed in. His shirt was skin: you could see it through the lattice work of his clothes. His pants were the same material. As for his stockings, one was green and the other red, and they barely covered his ankles. His shoes were in the barefoot style: worn both up and down. By a feather sewn in his hat, the way soldiers dressed, I suspected that he was, in fact, a soldier.

With this thought in mind, I asked him where he was from and where he was going. He raised his eyes to see who was asking, and we both recognized each other: it was the squire I had served under at Toledo. I was astonished to see him in that suit.

When the squire saw my look of amazement, he said: "I'm not surprised to see how startled you are to see me this way, but you won't be when I tell you what happened to me from that day I left you in Toledo until today. As I was going back to the house with the change from the doubloon to pay my creditors, I came across a veiled woman who pulled at my cloak and, sighing and sobbing, pleaded with me to help her out of the plight she was in. I begged her to tell me her troubles, saying that it would take her longer to tell them than for me to take care of them. Still crying, and with a maidenly blush, she told me that the favor I could do for her (and she prayed that I would do it) was to go with her to Madrid where, according to what people had told her, the man was staying who had not only dishonored her but had taken all her jewelry without fulfilling his promise to marry her. She said that if I would do this for her, she would do for me what a grateful woman should. I consoled her as best I could, raising her hopes by telling her that if her enemy were to be found anywhere in this world, she would be avenged.

"Well, to make a long story short, we went straight to the capital, and I paid her expenses all the way. The lady knew exactly where she was going, and she led me to a regiment of soldiers who gave her an enthusiastic welcome and took her to the captain, and there she signed up as a 'nurse' for the men. Then she turned to me, and with a brazen look said, 'All right, fathead. Now push off!' When I saw that she had tricked me, I flew into a rage, and I told her that if she were a man instead of a woman I would tear her heart out by the roots. One of the soldiers standing there came up and thumbed his nose at me, but he didn't dare to strike me because if he had they would have had to bury him on the spot.

'When I saw how badly that business was turning out, I left without saying another word, but I walked out a little faster than usual to see if any brawny soldier was going to follow me so that I could kill him. Because if I had fought that first little soldier boy and killed him (which I would have done, without any doubt), what honor or glory would there have been in it for me? But if the captain or some bully had come out, I would have sliced more holes in them than there are grains of sand in the sea. When I saw that none of them dared to follow me, I left, very pleased with myself. I looked around for work, and since I couldn't find any good enough for a man of my station, here I am like this. It is true that I could have been a valet or an escort to five or six seamstresses, but I would starve to death before I'd take a job like that."

My good master finished by telling me that, since he hadn't been able to find any merchants from his home town to lend him money, he was penniless, and he didn't know where he was going to spend the night. I caught his hint and offered to let him share my bed and my supper. He called my hand. When we were ready to go to sleep, I told him to take his clothes off the bed because it was too small for so many varmints. The next morning, wanting to get up without making any noise, I reached for my clothes—in vain. The traitor had taken them and vanished. I lay in bed, thinking I was going to die from pure misery. And it might have been better if I had died because I could have avoided all those times I was in agony later.

I started shouting, "Thief! Thief!" The people in the house came up and found me naked as a jaybird, looking in every corner of the room for something to cover myself with. They all laughed like fools, while I was swearing like a mule driver. I damned to hell that thieving bragger who had kept me up half the night telling about all the splendor of himself and his ancestors. The remedy that I took (since no one was giving me any) was to see if I could use that hot-air merchant's clothes until God furnished me with some others. But they were a labyrinth, with no beginning or end to them. There was no difference between the pants and the jacket. I put my legs in the sleeves and used the pants as a coat, and I didn't forget the stockings: they looked more like a court clerk's sleeves—loose enough to put his bribes in. The shoes were like fetters around my ankles: they didn't have any soles. I pulled the hat down over my head, putting the bottom side up so it wouldn't be so grimy. I won't say a word about the insects running all over me—either the crawling infantry or the galloping cavalry.

In this shape I went to see my master, since he had sent for me. He was astonished to see the scarecrow that walked in, and he laughed so hard his rear tether let loose, and—royal flush. Out of respect for him, I think we should pass over that in silence. After a thousand unsuccessful attempts to talk, he asked me why I was wearing a disguise. I told him, and the result was that instead of pitying me, he swore at me and threw me out of his house. He said that just as I had let that man come in and sleep in my bed, one day I would let someone else in, and they would rob him.

II. How Lazaro Embarked at Cartagena

By nature I didn't last very long with my masters. And it was that way with this one, too, although I wasn't to blame. So there I was, miserable, all alone, and in despair; and with the clothes I was wearing everyone scoffed and made fun of me. Some people said to me, "That's not a bad little hat you have, with its back door. It looks like an old Dutch lady's bonnet."

Others said, "Your rags are certainly stylish. They look like a pigsty: so many other fat little ones are in there with you that you could kill and salt them and send them home to your wife."

One of the soldiers—a packhandler—said to me, "Mr. Lazarillo,
I'll swear to God your stockings really show off your legs.
And your sandals look like the kind the barefoot friars wear."

A constable replied, 'That's because this gentleman is going to preach to the Moors."

They kept teasing and taunting me so much that I was nearly ready to go back home. But I didn't because I thought it would be a poor war if I couldn't get more than I would lose. What hurt me most was that everyone avoided me like the plague. We embarked at Cartagena: the ship was large and well stocked. They unfurled the sails, and a wind caught them and sent the ship skimming along at a good clip. The land disappeared from sight, and a cross wind lashed the sea and sent waves hurling up to the clouds. As the storm increased, we began losing hope; the captain and crew gave us up for lost. Everyone was weeping and wailing so much I thought we were at a sermon during Holy Week. With all the clamor no one could hear any of the orders that were given. Some people were running to one place, others to another: it was as noisy and chaotic as a blacksmith's shop. Everyone was saying confession to whoever they could. There was even one man who confessed to a prostitute, and she absolved him so well you would have thought she had been doing it for a hundred years.

Churning water makes good fishing, they say. So when I saw how busy everyone was, I said to myself: If I die, let it be with my belly full. I wandered down to the bottom of the ship, and there I found huge quantities of bread, wine, meat pies, and preserves, with no one paying any attention to them. I began to eat everything and to fill my stomach so it would be stocked up to last me till judgment day. A soldier came up and asked me to give him confession. He was astonished to see how cheerful I was and what a good appetite I had, and he asked how I could eat when death was so near. I told him I was doing it so that all the sea water I would drink when I drowned wouldn't make me sick. My simplicity made him shake with laughter from head to foot. I confessed a number of people who didn't utter a word with the agony they were in, and I didn't listen to them because I was too busy eating.

The officers and people of high rank escaped safely in a skiff, along with two priests who were on board. But my clothes were so bad that I couldn't fit inside. When I had my fill of eating, I went over to a cask full of good wine and transferred as much as I could hold into my stomach. I forgot all about the storm, myself, and everything. The ship started to sink and the water came pouring in as though it had found its home. A corporal grabbed my hands and as he was dying he asked me to listen to a sin he wanted to confess. He said he hadn't carried out a penance he had been given, which was to make a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Loreto, even though he had had many opportunities to do it. And now that he wanted to, he couldn't. I told him that with the authority vested in me, I would commute his penance, and that instead of going to Our Lady of Loreto, he could go to Santiago.

"Oh, sir," he said. "I would like to carry out that penance, but the water is starting to come into my mouth, and I can't."

"If that's the way it is," I said, "the penance I give you is to drink all the water in the sea."

But he didn't carry that out either because there were many men there who drank as much as he did. When it came up to my mouth I said to it: Try some other door, this one is not opening. And even if it had opened, the water couldn't have gotten in, because my body was so full of wine it looked like a stuffed pig. As the ship broke apart a huge swarm of fish came in. It was as though they were being given aid from the bodies on board. They ate the flesh of those miserable people who had been overcome by a drop in the ocean, as if they were grazing in the county pasture. They wanted to try me out, but I drew my trustworthy sword and without stopping to chat with such a low-class mob, I laid into them like a donkey in a new field of rye.

They hissed at me: "We're not trying to hurt you. We only want to see if you taste good."

I worked so hard that in less than half-a-quarter of an hour I killed more than five hundred tuna, and they were the ones that wanted to make a feast out of the flesh of this sinner. The live fish began to feed on the dead ones, and they left Lazaro's company when they saw it wasn't a very profitable place to be. I found myself lord of the sea, with no one to oppose me. I ran around from one place to another, and I saw things that were unbelievable: huge piles of skeletons and bodies. And I found a large number of trunks full of jewels and gold, great heaps of weapons, silks, linens, and spices. I was longing for it all and sighing because it wasn't back at home, safe, so that, as the buffoon says, I could eat my bread dipped in sardines.

I did what I could, but that was nothing. I opened a huge chest and filled it full of coins and precious jewels. I took some ropes from the piles of them there and tied up the chest, and then I knotted other ropes together until I had one I thought was long enough to reach to the surface of the water. If I can get all this treasure out of here, I thought to myself, there won't be a tavernkeeper in the world better off than I'll be. I'll build up my estate, live off my investments, and buy a summer house in Toledo. They'll call my wife "Madam," and me they'll call "Sir." I'll marry my daughter to the richest pastrycook in town. Everyone will come to congratulate me, and I'll tell them that I worked hard for it, and that I didn't take it out of the bowels of the earth but from the heart of the sea. That I didn't get damp with sweat but drenched as a dried herring. I have never been as happy in my life as I was then, and I wasn't even thinking about the fact that if I opened my mouth I would stay down there with my treasure, buried till hell froze over.

III. How Lazaro Escaped from the Sea

I saw how near I was to death, and I was horrified; how near I was to being rich, and I was overjoyed. Death frightened me, and the treasure delighted me. I wanted to run away from the first and enjoy the second. I tore off the rags that my master, the squire, had left me for the services I had done him. Then I tied the rope to my foot and began to swim (I didn't know how to do that very well, but necessity put wings on my feet and oars on my hands). The fish there gathered around to nip at me, and their prodding was like spurs that goaded me on. So with them nipping and me galloping, we came up to the surface of the water, where something happened that was the cause of all my troubles. The fish and I were caught up in some nets that some fishermen had thrown out, and when they felt the fish in the nets they pulled so mightily, and water began to flow into me just as mightily, so that I couldn't hold out, and I started to drown. And I would have drowned if the sailors had not pulled the booty on board with their usual speed. What a God-awful taste! I have never drunk anything that bad in my entire life. It tasted like the archpriest's piss my wife made me drink once, telling me it was good Ocana wine.

With the fish on board and myself as well, the fishermen began to pull on the line and discovered the spool (as the saying goes). They found me tangled up in the rope and were astonished, and they said, "What sort of fish is this? Its face looks like a man's. Is it the devil or a ghost? Let's pull on that rope and see what he has fastened to his foot."

The fishermen pulled so hard that their ship started to sink. When they saw the trouble they were in, they cut the rope, and at the same time they cut off Lazaro's hopes of ever becoming one of the landed gentry. They turned me upside down so I would empty out the water I had drunk and the wine, too. They saw that I wasn't dead (which was by no means the worst that could have happened to me), so they gave me a little wine, and I came back to life like a lamp with kerosene poured in. They asked me all kinds of questions, but I didn't answer a word until they gave me something to eat. When I got my breath back, the first thing I asked them about was the shackles that were tied to my foot. They told me that they had cut them to get out of the danger they had been in. Troy was lost and so were all of Lazaro's great desires: and right then his troubles, cares, and hardships began. There is nothing in the world worse than to have fancied yourself rich, on top of the world, and then to suddenly find yourself poor and at the bottom of the ladder.

I had built my castles on the water, and it had sunk them all. I told the fishermen what both of us lost when they had cut off my shackles. They were so angry that one of them nearly went mad. The shrewdest one said they should throw me back into the sea and wait for me there until I came up again. They all agreed with him, and even though I objected strongly, their minds were made up: they said that since I knew the way, it would be easy for me (as if I would be going to the pastry shop or the tavern!).

They were so blinded by their greed that they would have thrown me out if my fortune (or misfortune) had not arranged for a ship to come up to us to help carry back the fish. They all kept quiet so that the others wouldn't find out about the treasure they had discovered. But they had to leave off their evil plan for the moment. They brought their boats to shore, and they threw me back with the fish to hide me, intending to hunt for me again when they could. Later, two of them picked me up and carried me to a little hut nearby. One man who didn't know the secret asked them what I was. They said I was a monster that had been caught with the tuna. When they had me inside that miserable pigsty, I begged them to give me some rags to cover my naked body so I could be presentable.

You can do that," they said, "after you've settled your account with the hostess."

At the time I didn't understand their gibberish. The fame of the monster spread through the countryside, and many people came to the hut to see me. But the fishermen didn't want to show me; they said they were waiting for permission from the bishops and the Inquisition and that, until then, it was entirely out of the question. I was stupified. I didn't know what they were planning, and so I didn't know what to say or do. The same thing happened to me that happens to the cuckold: he is the last to find out. Those devils cooked up a scheme that Satan himself wouldn't have thought of. But that requires a new chapter and a new look.

IV. How They Took Lazaro through Spain

Opportunity makes the thief. And when the fishermen realized they had such a good opportunity, they grabbed it lock, stock, and barrel. When they saw that so many people were gathering around the new fish, they decided to win back what they had lost when they cut the rope from my foot. So they sent word to the ministers of the Inquisition, asking permission to show a fish with a man's face through all of Spain. And when they offered those gentlemen a present of the best fish they had caught, they were given that permission immediately. Meanwhile, our friend Lazaro was thanking God for having taken him out of the belly of the whale. (And that was a great miracle since my ability and knowledge were not very good, and I swam like a lead brick.)

Four of the fishermen grabbed hold of me, and they seemed more like executioners—the kind that crucified Christ—than men. They tied up my hands, and then they put a mossy wig and beard on me, and they didn't forget the mustache: I looked like a garden statue. They wrapped my feet in seaweed, and I saw that they had dressed me up like a stuffed and trussed trout. Then I began to groan and moan over my troubles, complaining to fate or fortune: Why are you always pursuing me? I have never seen or touched you, but if a man can tell the cause by the effects, I know from my experience with you that there is no siren, basilisk, viper, or lioness with her young more cruel than you are. By flattery and caresses you lift men up to the height of your riches and pleasures and then hurtle them into the abyss of all their misery and calamities, and their depths are as low as your favors were high.

One of those cutthroats heard my soliloquy, and with a rasping voice he said to me, "If you say another word, Mr. Tunafish, we'll salt you along with your friends, or we'll burn you as a monster. The Inquisition," he continued, "has told us to take you through the village and towns in Spain and to show you off to everyone as a wonder and monster of nature."

I swore to them that I was no tuna, monster, or anything out of the ordinary. I said that I was a man just like everyone else, and that if I had come out of the ocean it was because I had fallen into it along with the men who drowned while going to make war on Algiers. But they were deaf men, and even worse, because they didn't want to hear. When I saw that my begging was as useless as the soap they use to wash an ass's head, I became patient and waited for time—which cures everything—to cure my trouble, knowing it all came from suffering through that damned metamorphosis.

They put me in a barrel cut in half, made to look like a brigantine. Then they filled it with water that came up to my lips as I sat in it. I couldn't stand up because they had my feet tied with a rope, and one end of it came out between the mesh of that hairy mess of mine so that if I made so much as a peep, they would make me hop and sink like a frog and drink more water than a person with dropsy. I would keep my mouth closed until I felt whoever was pulling on the rope let it go slack. Then I would stick my head out like a turtle, and I learned by what happened to my own.

They showed me like this to everyone, and so many people came to see me (each one paying twenty coppers) that they made two hundred pieces of silver in one day. The more money they made the more they wanted, and they began to be very concerned about my health so they could prolong it. They held a summit conference and discussed whether or not they should take me out of the water at night: they were afraid that with all the wet and cold it might cut my life short, and they loved mine more than their own (because of all the profit they were getting from mine). They decided to keep me in the water all the time because they thought the force of habit would change my nature. So poor Lazaro was like a string of wet rice or the binding on a raft.

I leave to the dear reader's imagination what I went through in this situation: here I was, a captive in this free land, in chains because of the wickedness of those greedy puppeteers. The worst part about it, and what tormented me most, was that I had to pretend to be mute when I really wasn't. I wasn't even able to open my mouth because the instant I did my guard was so alert that without anyone being able to see him, he would fill me up with water, afraid that I would talk.

My meals were dunked bread that the people who came to see me threw in so they could watch me eat. So for the six months I spent in that cooler I didn't get another damned thing to eat: I was dying of hunger. I drank tub water, and since it wasn't very clean it was all the more nourishing—especially because its coldness gave me attacks of diarrhea that lasted me as long as that watery purgatory did.

V. How They Took Lazaro to the Capital

Those torturers took me from city to town, from town to village, from village to farm, happier than a lark with their earnings. They made fun of poor Lazaro, and they would sing: "Hooray, hooray for the fish. He earns our keep while we loaf."

My "coffin" was placed on a cart, and three men went along with me: the mule driver, the man who pulled on the rope whenever I tried to say anything, and the one who told all about me. This last one would make a speech about the strange way they caught me, telling more lies than a tailor at Eastertime. When we were traveling and no one else was around, they let me talk, and that was the only courtesy they showed me. I asked them who the devil had put it in their heads to take me around like that, in a fish bowl. They answered that if they didn't do it I would die on the spot because, since I was a fish, I couldn't live out of water. When I saw how their minds were set on the idea, I decided to be a fish, and I finally convinced myself that I was one: after all, everyone else thought that's what I was, and that the seawater had changed me into one, and they say that the voice of the people is the voice of God. So from then on I was as silent as a man at mass. They took me to the capital, and there they really made a lot of money. Because the people there, being idlers, liked novelties.

Among all the people who came to see me there were two students. They studied the features of my face very carefully, and then, in a low tone, they said that they would swear on the Bible I was a man and not a fish. And they said if they were the authorities they would get at the naked truth by taking a leather strap to our naked shoulders. I was praying to God with all my heart and soul that they would do it, as long as they could get me out of there. I tried to help them by shouting, 'You scholars are right." But I hardly had my mouth open when my guard pulled me under the water. Everyone's shouting when I ducked (or, rather, when they dunked me) stopped those good scholars from going on with their talk.

They threw bread to me, and I would bolt it down almost before it had a chance to get wet. They didn't give me half of what I could eat. I remembered the feasts I had in Toledo, how well I ate with my German friends, and that good wine I used to announce in the streets. I prayed to God to repeat the miracle of Cana of Galilee and not let me die at the hands of water—my worst enemy. I thought about what those students had said, which no one heard because of the noise. I realized that I was a man, and I never thought otherwise from then on, although my wife had told me many times that I was a beast, and the boys at Toledo used to say, "Mr. Lazaro, pull your hat down a little—we can see your horns."

All this, along with the sauce I was in, had made me doubt whether or not I really was a man. But after I heard those blessed earthly diviners, I had no more doubts about it, and I tried to escape from the hands of those Chaldeans.

Once, in the dead of night, I saw that my guards were fast asleep, and I tried to get loose. But the ropes around me were wet, and I couldn't. I thought about shouting, but I decided that that wouldn't work, since the first one who heard me would seal my mouth with a half-gallon of water. When I saw that way out cut off, I began to twist around impatiently in the slough, and I struggled and pushed so much that the cask turned over, and me along with it. All the water spilled out, and when I found myself freed I shouted for help.

The fishermen were terrified when they realized what I'd done, and they quickly hit on a solution: they stopped up my mouth by stuffing it full of seaweed. And to muddle my shouts, they began to shout themselves, even louder, calling out, "Help, help, call the law!" And as they were doing all this, they filled the cask back up with water from a nearby well, with unbelievable speed. The innkeeper came running out with a battle-ax, and everyone else at the inn came out armed with iron pokers and sticks. All the neighbors came in, along with a constable and six deputies who happened to be passing by. The innkeeper asked the sailors what had happened, and they answered that thieves had tried to steal their fish. And like a madman he began shouting, "Get the thieves, get the thieves!" Some went to see if they had gotten out the door; others went to find out if they were escaping across the rooftops. And as for me, my custodians had put me back in my vat.

It happened that the water that spilled out all ran through a hole in the floor, onto the bed of a room downstairs where the daughter of the house was sleeping. Now this girl had been so moved to charity that she had brought a young priest in with her to spend the night in contemplation. They became so frightened when the deluge fell on the bed and all the people began shouting that they crawled out through a window as naked as Adam and Eve, without even a fig leaf to cover their private parts. There was a full moon, and its brightness was so great that it could have competed with the sun. When the people saw them they shouted, "Get the thieves, catch the thieves!" The deputies and the constable ran after the girl and the priest and quickly caught up with them because they were barefoot and the stones on the ground made it difficult for them to run. And in one swoop they led them off to jail. Early next morning the fishermen left Madrid to go to Toledo, and they never did find out what God had done with that simple little maiden and the devout priest.

VI. How They Took Lazaro to Toledo

Man's efforts are vain, his knowledge is nil, and he has no ability when God does not strengthen, teach, and guide him. All my efforts only served to make my guards more wary and careful. The outburst of the night before made them very angry, and they beat me so much along the road that they nearly left me for dead. They said, You damned fish—you were trying to get away. If we weren't so kindhearted, we would kill you. You're like an oak tree that won't give up its acorns unless it's beaten."

The fishermen took me into Toledo, pounded, cursed, and dying of hunger. They found a place to stay, near the square of Zocodover, at the house of a lady whose wines I used to announce. They put me in a room downstairs, and many people came to see me. One of them was my Elvira, leading my daughter by the hand. When I saw them I couldn't hold back two Nile Rivers of tears that flowed from my eyes. I sighed and wept—but to myself so the fishermen wouldn't deprive me of what I loved so much and what I wanted to feast my eyes on. Although it might have been better if those men who took away my voice had taken away my sight, too, because when I looked at my wife carefully I saw—I don't know if I should say it—she looked like she was about to go into labor. I sat there absolutely amazed, although I shouldn't have been if I had thought about it because my lord the archdeacon told me when I left that city to go to war that he would treat her as if she were his very own. What really bothered me was that I couldn't convince myself that she was pregnant by me because I had been gone for more than a year.

When we were living together she used to say to me, "Lazaro, don't think I'm cheating on you, because if you do you're very wrong." And I was so satisfied that I avoided thinking anything bad about her the way the devil avoids holy water. I spent my life happy and content and not at all jealous (which is a madman's sickness). Time and again I have thought to myself that this business of children is all a matter of belief. Because how many men are there who love children they think are their own when the only thing they have in common is their name? And there are others who hate their children because they get the notion that their wives have put horns on their heads.

I began to count the days and months, and I found the road to my consolation closed off. Then I began to think that my wife might have dropsy. I didn't go on with this pious meditation very long because as soon as she left, two old women began to talk to each other: "What do you think of that archpriestess? She certainly doesn't need her husband around." "Who is the father?" asked the other. 'Who?" answered the first, 'Why, the archpriest. And he's such a good man that, to avoid the scandal that would spread if she gave birth in his house without a husband, he's going to marry her to that foreigner, Pierre, next Sunday, and that fellow will be just as understanding as my friend, Lazaro."

This was the last straw—the non plus ultra—of my understanding. My heart began to break out in a sweat in the water, and without being able to lift a hand I fainted in that hogsty. The water began to pour into me through every door and window, without any resistance. I looked like I was dead (although it was completely against my will, because I wanted to live as long as I could and as long as God would let me, in spite of those damned fishermen and my bad luck).

The fishermen were very upset, and they made every one leave. Then they very quickly lifted my head out of the water. When they saw that I had no pulse and that I'd stopped breathing, they did, too. They started to moan over what they had lost (which was no small amount for them), and they took me out of the cask. Then they tried to make me vomit up all I had drunk, but that was useless because death had come in and closed the door behind. When they saw all their dreams gone up in smoke, they turned as ashen as lilies on the Sunday after Easter. They couldn't think of any way to abet or abate their trials and troubles. The Council of Three finally decreed that the following night they would take me to the river and throw me in with a stone tied around my neck so that what had caused my death would also be my grave.

VII. What Happened to Lazaro on the Way to the Tagus River

Never lose hope no matter how miserable you are, because when you least expect it God will open the doors and windows of His mercy and will show that nothing is impossible for Him, and that He has the knowledge, the ability, and the desire to change the plans of the wicked into healthful, beneficial remedies for those who trust in Him. Those brutal executioners decided that Death wasn't joking (it seldom does), so they put me in a sack, threw me across the back of a donkey like a wineskin—or rather a waterskin, since I was full of water up to my mouth—and started out along the road of Cuesta de Carmen. And they were more sorrowful than if they were going to bury the father who gave them life and the mother who bore them.

It was my good fortune that when they put me on the mule, I was belly side down. Since my head was hanging downward, I began to spew out water as if they had lifted the floodgates on a dam, or as if I were a drop hammer. I came to, and when I caught my breath I realized that I was out of the water and out of that blasted hairy mess. I didn't know where I was or where they were taking me. I only heard them saying, "For our own safety we'll have to find a very deep well so they won't discover him so soon." Then I saw the handwriting on the wall and guessed what was happening. I knew that their bark could be no worse than their bite, and when I heard people approaching I called, "Help, help, for God's sake!"

The people I had noticed were the night watch, and they ran up when they heard my cries, their swords out and ready. They searched the sack, and they found poor Lazaro—a drenched haddock. Body and soul, they took us all off to jail on the spot: the fishermen were crying to see themselves imprisoned, and I was laughing to find myself free.

They put them in a cell and me in a bed. The next morning they took our statements. The fishermen confessed that they had carried me all over Spain, but they said that they had done it thinking I was a fish and that they had asked for the Inquisition's permission to do it. I told them the truth of the matter: how those fiends had tied me up so that I couldn't make a peep. They had the archpriest and my good Bridget come to testify as to whether or not I really was the Lazaro of Tormes I said I was. My wife came in first, and she looked me over very carefully, and then said it was true that I did look something like her good husband, but she didn't think I was him because even though I had been an animal, I was more like a drone than a fish, and more like a bullock than a tuna. After saying this she made a deep bow and left.

The attorney for those hangmen said I should be burned because I was undoubtedly a monster, and he was going to prove it.

I thought to myself: What if there really is an enchanter following me and changing me into anything he likes?

The judges told him to be quiet. Then the archpriest came in. He saw me looking as pale and wrinkled as an old lady's belly, and he said he didn't recognize my face or my figure. I refreshed his memory about some past things (many of them secret) that had happened between us; I especially told him to think back on the night he came to my bed naked and said that he was afraid of a ghost in his bedroom, and then crawled into bed between my wife and me. So that I wouldn't go on with these reminders, he confessed that I really was his good friend and servant, Lazaro.

The trial ended with the testimony of the captain who had taken me with him from Toledo. He was one of those who escaped the storm in a skiff, and he confessed that I was, in fact, his servant Lazaro. The time and place the fishermen said they had fished me out supported that. The judges sentenced them to two hundred whippings apiece and the confiscation of their belongings: a third of it would be given to the King, a third to the prisoners, and a third to Lazaro. They found them with two thousand pieces of silver, two mules, and a cart, and after the costs and expenditures were paid I got two hundred pieces of silver. The sailors were plucked and skinned, and I was rich and happy because I had never in my life been the owner of so much money at one time.

I went to the house of a friend of mine, and after I had downed a few pitchers of wine to get rid of the bad taste of the water and was feeling mellow, I began to strut around like a count and to eat like a king; I was esteemed by my friends, feared by my enemies, and wooed by everyone. My past troubles seemed like a dream to me, my present luck was like a port of leisure, and my future hopes a paradise of delights. Hardships humiliate, prosperity makes a man haughty. For the time those two hundred silver pieces lasted, if the King had called me his cousin I would have taken it as an insult.

When we Spaniards get a silver coin, we're princes, and even if we don't have one we still have the vanity that goes with it. If you ask some shabby beggar who he is, he'll tell you at the very least that he is of noble blood and that his bad luck has him backed into a corner, and that's how this mad world is: it raises those who are on the bottom and lowers those who are on top. But even though it is that way, he won't give in to anyone, he puts only the highest value on himself, and he will die of hunger before he'll work. And if Spaniards do take a job or learn something, they have such contempt for it that either they won't work or, if they do, their work is so bad that you can hardly find a good craftsman anywhere in Spain.

I remember there was a cobbler in Salamanca, and whenever anyone brought him something to fix, he would deliver a soliloquy, complaining that fate had put him in such straits that he had to work in this lowly position when the good name of his family was so well known all over Spain. One day I asked one of his neighbors who that bragger's parents were. They told me his father was a grape stomper, and in winter a hogkiller, and that his mother was a belly washer (I mean the maid for a tripe merchant).

I bought a worn-out velvet suit and a ragged cast-off cape from Segovia. The sword I wore was so enormous that its tip would unpave the streets as I walked. I didn't want to go and see my wife when I got out of jail so that she would want to see me even more, and also to take revenge for the disdain for me that she was carrying around inside herself. I really thought that when she saw me so well-dressed she would repent and greet me with open arms. But obstinate she was, and obstinate she remained. I found her with a new baby and a new husband. When she saw me she shouted, "Get that damn drenched fish—that plucked goose—out of my sight because, if you don't, I swear on my father's grave that I'll get up and poke his eyes out!"

And I answered very coolly, "Not so fast, Mrs. Streetwalker. If you won't admit I'm your husband, then you're not my wife either. Give me my daughter, and we'll still be friends. I have enough of a fortune now," I went on, "to marry her to a very honorable man."

I thought those two hundred pieces of silver would turn out to be like the fifty silver coins of little Blessed John who, every time he spent them, would find fifty more in his purse. But since I was little Bedeviled Lazaro, it didn't turn out that way with me, as you will see in the next chapter.

The archpriest contested my demand. He said she wasn't mine, and to prove it he showed me the baptismal book, and when it was compared to the marriage records, it was evident that the child had been born four months after I knew my wife. Up to then I had felt as spirited as a stallion, but I suddenly realized they had made an ass of me: my daughter wasn't mine at all. I shook the dust off my feet and washed my hands to show my innocence and that I was leaving for good. I turned my back on them, feeling as content as if I had never known them. I went looking for my friends and told them what had happened; they consoled me—which wasn't hard for them to do.

I didn't want to go back to my job as a town crier because my new velvet clothes had changed my self-esteem. While I was taking a walk to the Visagra gate I met an old woman, a friend of mine, at the gate of the convent of San Juan de los Reyes. After she greeted me she told me that my wife had softened when she'd found out about all the money I had, especially now that that Frenchman had chastened her.

I begged her to tell me what had happened. She said the archpriest and my wife had talked one day about whether it would be a good idea to take me back in and throw Frenchy out; and they discussed the pros and cons of it. But their discussion was not so secret that the bridegroom didn't hear it. He pretended he hadn't heard a thing, and the next morning he went to work at the olive grove. At noon, when his wife and mine brought his lunch out to him, he pulled off all her clothes, tied her to the trunk of a tree, and gave her more than a hundred lashes. And still not satisfied, he made all her clothes into a bundle, took off her jewelry, and walked away with it all, leaving her tied up, naked and bleeding. She would undoubtedly have died there if the archpriest hadn't sent someone looking for her.

The lady also told me she was absolutely sure that if I arranged for somebody to ask her, she would welcome me back, because she had heard my Elvira say, "Poor me, why didn't I take back my good Lazaro? He was as good as could be. He was never critical or particular, and I could do whatever I wanted."

This was the touch that turned me, and I was thinking of taking the good old woman's advice, but first I wanted to talk it over with my friends.

VIII. How Lazaro Brought a Lawsuit against His Wife

We men are like barnyard hens: if we want to do something good we shout it out and cackle about it; but if it's something bad, we don't want anybody to find out so they won't stop us from doing what we shouldn't. I went to see one of my friends, and I found three of them there together; because after I had come into money, they multiplied like flies. I told them what I wanted to do—go back to my wife and get away from wagging tongues because "Better certain evil than doubtful good." They painted a black picture to me and said I was spineless and that I didn't have a brain in my body because the woman I wanted to live with was a whore, a hussy, a trollop, a slut, and, finally, a devil's mule. (That's what they call a priest's mistress in Toledo.)

My friends said so many things to me and gave me so many arguments that I decided not to beg or even ask my wife. When my good friends (damned friends, anyway) saw that their arguments and advice had done their work, they went even further. They said they were advising me, because I was such a good friend, to remove the spots and the stains on my honor and to defend it, since it had fallen into such bad times, by suing the archpriest and my wife. They said it wouldn't cost so much as a penny since they were lawyers.

One of them was an attorney for lost causes, and he offered me a thousand pieces of silver from the profits. The other one was more knowledgeable because he was a prostitutes' lawyer, and he told me that if he were in my shoes he wouldn't take less than two thousand. The third one assured me (and since he was a bumbailiff, he knew what he was talking about) that he had seen other lawsuits that were less clear, that had brought the people who began them an enormous amount of money. Furthermore, he thought that at the first confrontation that Domine Baccalaureus would fill my hands and anoint the lawyers' to make us withdraw the lawsuit, and that he would beg me to go back to my wife. So I would get more honor and profit from it than if I went back to her on my own.

My friends commended this business to me highly, luring me on with high hopes. I was taken in right then. I didn't know what to say to their sophist arguments, although it really seemed to me that it would be better to forgive and forget than to go to extremes, and that I should carry out the most difficult of God's commandments (the fourth one), which is to love your enemies— especially since my wife had never acted like an enemy to me. In fact, it was because of her that I had begun to rise in the world and become known by many people who would point at me and say, "There goes that nice fellow, Lazaro."

Because of my wife I was somebody. If the daughter that the archdeacon said wasn't mine, was or wasn't, only God, who looks into men's hearts, knows. It could be that he was fooled just the way I was. And it could happen that some of the people who are reading and laughing over my simpleness so hard they slobber on their beards might be raising the children of some ignorant priest. They might be working, sweating, and striving to leave the very ones rich who will impoverish their honor, and all the time they are so sure that if there is any woman in the world who is faithful, it's their wife. And even your name, dear reader— Lord Whitehall—might really come from Wittol.

But I don't want to destroy anyone's illusions. All these reflections still weren't enough, so I took out a lawsuit against the archpriest and my wife. Since there was ready money, they had them in jail inside of twenty-four hours: him in the archbishop's prison and her in the public one. The lawyers told me not to worry about the money that that business could cost me since it would all come out of that priest's hide. So, to make it even worse for the priest and to raise the costs, I gave whatever they asked me. They were walking around diligent, solicitous, and energetic. When they smelled my cash, they were like flies on honey: they didn't take a step in vain.

In less than a week the lawsuit had moved far ahead, and my pocketbook had lost as much ground. The evidence was gathered easily because the constables who arrested my wife and the archpriest caught them in the act and had taken them off to jail in their nightshirts, the way they found them. There were many witnesses who told the truth. My good lawyers and counselors and the court clerk saw how thin and weak my pocketbook was getting, and they began to falter. It reached the point where I had to spur them harder than a hired mule to get them to make a move.

The slowdown was so great that when the archpriest and his group heard about it, they started crowing and anointing the hands and feet of my representatives. They seemed like the weights on a clock that were going up just as fast as mine were coming down. They managed it so well that in two weeks the archpriest and my wife were out of jail on bond, and in less than one week more they condemned Lazaro with false witnesses so that he had to apologize, pay the court costs, and be banished from Toledo forever.

I apologized the way I should have, since with only two hundred silver pieces I had taken a lawsuit out against a man who had that much money to burn. I gave them the shirt off my back to help pay the court costs, and I left the city in the raw.

There I was, rich for an instant, suing a dignitary of the Holy Church of Toledo, an undertaking fit only for a prince. I had been respected by my friends, feared by my enemies, in the position of a gentleman who wouldn't put up with a whisper of aspersion. And just as suddenly I found myself thrown out—not from any earthly paradise with figleaves to cover my private parts, but from the place I loved most and where I had gotten so much comfort and pleasure, using some rags I found in a rubbish heap to cover my nakedness.

I took refuge in the common consolation of all unfortunates. I thought that since I was at the bottom of the wheel of fortune I would be certain to go back up. I recall now what I once heard my master, the blind man (who was like a fox whenever he started to preach), say: Every man in the world rose and fell on the wheel of fortune; some followed the movement of the wheel, and others went against it. And there was this difference between them: those who followed the wheel's movement fell as quickly as they rose; and those who went against it, once they reached the top—even if they had to work hard at it—they stayed there longer than the others. According to this, I was going right with the grain—and so quickly that I was barely on top when I found myself in the abyss of misery.

I found myself a picaro—and a real one, since I had only been pretending up to then. And I could really say: Naked was I born, naked am I now, nothing lost and nothing gained.

I started off toward Madrid, begging along the way since that was something I knew how to do very well. So there I was again, back at my trade. I told everyone about my troubles: some felt sorry, others laughed, and some gave me alms. Since I had no wife or children to support, with what they gave me I had more than enough to eat, and to drink, too. That year people had harvested so many grapes for wine that at nearly every door I went to they asked if I wanted anything to drink, because they didn't have any bread to give me. I never refused, and so sometimes I would down a good two gallons of wine before eating anything, and I'd be happier than a girl on the eve of a party.

Let me tell you what I really think: the picaresque life is the only life. There is nothing in the world like it. If rich men tried it, they would give up their estates for it, just the way the ancient philosophers gave up all they possessed to go over to that life. I say "go over" because the life of a philosopher and the life of a picaro is the same. The only difference is that philosophers gave up all they had for their love of that kind of life, and picaros find it without giving up anything. Philosophers abandoned their estates to contemplate natural and divine things, the movements of the heavens, with less distraction; picaros do it to sow all their wild oats. Philosophers threw their goods into the sea; picaros throw them in their stomachs. Philosophers despised those things as vain and transitory; while picaros don't care for them because they bring along cares and work—something that goes against their profession. So the picaresque life is more leisurely than the life of kings, emperors, and popes. I decided to travel this road because it was freer, less dangerous, and never sad.

IX. How Lazaro Became a Baggage Carrier

There is no position, no science or art a man does not have to apply all his intelligence to if he wants to perfect his knowledge of it. Suppose a cobbler has been working at his job for thirty years. Tell him to make you a pair of shoes that are wide at the toe, high at the instep, with laces.

Will he make them? Before you get a pair the way you asked him, your feet will be shriveled. Ask a philosopher why a fly's stool comes out black when it's on a white object and white when it's on something black. He'll turn as red as a maiden who is caught doing it by candlelight, and he won't know what to answer. Or if he does answer this question, he won't be able to answer a hundred other tomfooleries.

Near the town of Illescas, I ran into a fellow who I knew was an archpicaro by the way he looked. I went up to him the way I would to an oracle to ask him how I should act in this new life of mine so I wouldn't be arrested. He said that if I wanted to keep free of the law I should combine Mary's idleness with Martha's work. In other words, if I was going to be a picaro I should also be a kitchenhelper, a brothel servant, a slaughterhouse boy, or a baggage carrier, which was a way of covering up for the picaresque life. Furthermore, he said that because he hadn't done this, even after the twenty years he'd been following his profession, they had just yesterday whipped him up one side and down the other for being a tramp.

I thanked him for the warning and took his advice. When I got to Madrid I bought a porter's strap and stood in the middle of the square, happier than a cat with gibblets. As luck would have it, the first person to put me to work was a maiden (God forgive my lie) about eighteen years old, but more primped up than a novice in a convent. She told me to follow her. She took me down so many streets that I thought she was getting paid for walking or was playing a trick on me. After a while we came to a house that I recognized as one of ill repute when I saw the side door, the patio, and the beastly old maids dancing there.

We went into her cell, and she asked me if I wanted her to pay me for my work before we left. I told her I would wait until we got to the place where I was taking the bundle. I loaded it on my back and started down the road to the Guadalajara gate. She told me to put it in a carriage to go to the Nagera fair. The load was light since it was mainly made up of mortars, cosmetics, and perfume bottles. On the way I found out that she had been in that profession for eight years.

"The first one to prick me," she said, "was the Father Rector at Seville, where I'm from, and he did it with such devotion that from that day to this I'm very devoted to them. He put me in the charge of a holy woman, and she provided me with everything I needed for more than six months. Then a captain took me from there. And since that time I've been led from pillar to post until here I am, like this. I wish to God I had never left that good father who treated me like a daughter and loved me like his sister. Anyway, I've had to work just to be able to eat."

At this time we came up to a carriage that was about to leave. I put the things I was carrying in it and asked her to pay me for my work. The chatterbox said she would be glad to, and she hauled off and hit me so hard she knocked me to the ground. Then she said, "Are you so stupid that you ask someone of my profession for money? Didn't I tell you before we left the brothel that I would give you satisfaction there for your work if you wanted?"

She jumped into the carriage like a nag and spurred the horses away, leaving me feeling the sting. So there I sat, like a jackass, not sure what had happened to me. I thought that if that job finished as well as it was starting out, I would be rich by the end of the year.

I hadn't even left there when another carriage arrived from Alcala de Henares. The people inside jumped down: they were all whores, students, and friars. One of them belonged to the Franciscan order, and he asked me if I would like to carry his bundle to his monastery. I told him I would be glad to because I saw that he certainly wouldn't trick me the way the whore had done. I loaded it onto my back, and it was so heavy I could barely carry it, but I thought of the payment I would get, and that gave me strength. When we reached the monastery I was very tired because it had been so far. The friar took his bundle and said, "May heaven reward you," and then he closed the door behind him.

I waited for him to come back out and pay me, but when I saw how long he was taking, I knocked on the door. The gatekeeper came out and asked me what I wanted. I told him I wanted to be paid for carrying the bundle I'd brought. He told me to go away, that they didn't pay anything there. As he closed the door he told me not to knock again because it was the hour for meditations, and if I did he would whip me thoroughly. I stood there, stupified. A poor man—one of those who were standing inside the vestibule—said to me, "Brother, you might as well go away. These fathers never have any money. They live on what other people give them."

"They can live on whatever they want to, but they'll pay me or
I'm not Lazaro of Tormes."

I began to knock again very angrily. The lay brother came out even angrier, and without saying so much as, how do you do? he knocked me to the ground like a ripe pear, and holding me down, he kicked me a good half-dozen times, then pounded me just as much, and left me flattened out as if the clocktower of Saragossa had fallen on top of me.

I lay there, stretched out, for more than a half-hour without being able to get up. I thought about my bad luck and that the strength of that irregular clergyman had been used so badly. He would have been better off serving under His Highness, the King, than living from alms for the poor—although they aren't even good for that since they're so lazy. The Emperor, Charles V, pointed this out when the General of the Franciscans offered him twenty-two-thousand friars, who wouldn't be over forty or under twenty-two years old, to fight in the war. The invincible Emperor answered that he didn't want them because he would have needed twenty-two-thousand pots stew every day to keep them alive, implying that they were more fit for eating than working.

God forgive me, but from that day to this I've hated those clergymen so much that whenever I see them they look to me like lazy drones or sieves that lift the meat out of the stew and leave the broth. I wanted to leave that work, but first I waited there that night, stretched out like a corpse waiting for his funeral.

X. What Happened to Lazaro with an Old Bawd

Feeling faint and dying from hunger, I went up the street very slowly, and as I passed by the Plaza of Cebada I ran into an old devout woman with fangs longer than a wild boar. She came up to me and asked if I wanted to carry a trunk to the house of a friend of hers, saying that it wasn't far away and that she would give me forty coppers. When I heard that, I praised God to hear such sweet words coming from such a foul-smelling mouth as hers: she would give me forty coppers! I told her I would, with pleasure—but my real pleasure was being able to grab onto those forty coppers rather than to carry anything, since I was more in a condition to be carried than to carry. I loaded the trunk on my back, but it was so big and heavy I could barely lift it. The good old woman told me to handle it carefully because inside were some perfume bottles that she prized highly. I told her not to worry because I would walk very slowly. (And even if I had wanted to I couldn't have done anything else: I was so hungry I could barely waddle.)

We reached the house we were taking the chest to. They were very happy to get it, especially a young maiden, plump and dimpled (I was wishing that after I'd eaten a good meal and was in bed, the lice there looked like her): she smiled happily and said she wanted the trunk in her dressing room. I took it there: the old lady gave her the key and told her to keep it until she got back from Segovia. She said she was going there to visit a relative of hers, and she thought she would be back in four days. She gave the girl a hug before she left and whispered a few words in her ear that turned the maiden as red as a rose. And although I thought that was nice, I would have thought it was nicer if I had had plenty to eat. She said good-by to everyone in the house, and asked the girl's father and mother to forgive her for being so bold. They told her she was welcome there anytime. She gave me forty coppers and whispered in my ear to come back to her house the next morning and I would earn forty more.

I went away, happier than a bride in June. I spent thirty coppers on supper, and kept ten to pay for a room. I thought about the power of money. As soon as that old woman gave me the forty coppers I found myself lighter than the wind, more valiant than Roland, and stronger than Hercules. Oh, money, it is not without reason that most men consider you their God. You are the cause of all good, and the root of all evil. You are the inventor of the arts and the one who keeps them excellent. Because of you some maidens remain pure and other maidens give up their purity. Finally, there is no difficulty in the world difficult for you, no hidden place that you do not penetrate, no mountain you do not level, no humble hill you do not raise up.

The next morning I went to the old lady's house the way she asked me. She told me to go back with her and pick up the trunk she had left the day before. She told the people at the house that she had come back for it because when she was about a mile from Madrid, on the way to Segovia, she had met her relative who had had the same idea she did and was coming to visit her, and that she had to have it now because there were clean linens in it that she needed for her relative's room. The plumpish girl gave her back the key, kissing and hugging her more eagerly than the first time; and after she had whispered to her again, they helped me load the trunk on my back, and it seemed to me lighter than the day before because my belly was fuller.

As I went down the stairs I stumbled over something that the Devil must have put there. I tripped and fell with the baggage, and as I rolled down to the bottom of the stairs where the parents of the innocent girl were waiting, I broke both my nose and my ribs. With the knocks that damned chest got, it opened up, and inside there appeared a dashing young man with sword and dagger at his side. He was dressed in traveling clothes, without a cloak. His trousers and jacket were of green satin, and in his hat he wore a feather of the same color. He had on red garters with pearl-white stockings and white sandals. He stood up very elegantly, and making a deep bow he walked right out the door. Everyone stood there agape at the sudden vision, and they looked at each other like wooden puppets.

When they came out of their trance, they quickly called two of their sons and told them what had happened. With a great outcry the sons grabbed their swords, and shouted, "Kill him, kill him!" They ran out looking for that dandy, but since he had left in a hurry, they weren't able to catch up with him.

The parents had stayed behind in the house, and they closed the door and went to take revenge on the bawd. But she had heard the noise and knew what the cause of it was, and she went out a back door with the eternal bride-to-be right behind her. So the parents found themselves totally taken in. They came back down to take their revenge out on me, and I was all crippled up, unable to move. If it hadn't been for that, I would have been right behind that fellow who had caused all my damage. The brothers came in sweating and panting, vowing and swearing that since they hadn't caught that wretch, they would kill their sister and the go-between. But when they were told they had gotten away by the back door, there was swearing and cursing everywhere.

One of them said, "If only the Devil himself were here right now with all his hellish throng: I would polish them off like flies. Come on, you devils, come on! But what am I calling you for? I know that where you are, you're so afraid of my temper you wouldn't dare show yourselves here. If I'd seen that coward, I would only have had to breathe hard on him, and he would have blown so far away you'd never hear of him again."

The other one said, "If I had caught up with him, I wouldn't have left a piece of him bigger than his ear. But if he's to be found anywhere in this world—or even if he's not—he won't escape my hands. I'll get him even if he hides in the center of the earth."

They kept on with these boasts and other empty threats, and poor Lazaro was expecting all those heavy clouds to unload on him. But he was more afraid of the ten or twelve little boys there than of those braggers. Everyone, old and young, attacked me in a fury: some kicked me, others hit me with their fists; some pulled my hair, others boxed my ears. My fear hadn't been in vain because the girls stuck long penny needles into me, and that made me cry out at the top of my lungs. The family slaves pinched me until I saw stars.

Some of them said, "Let's kill him."

Others said, "Better yet, let's throw him in the privy."

The clamor was so great it sounded like they were pulverizing chaff, or that they were hammers in a fulling mill that weren't letting up. When they saw that I was out of breath, they stopped beating me, but they didn't stop threatening me. Since the father was more mature, or more rotten, he told them to leave me alone, and he said that if I would tell the truth about who had robbed him of his honor, they wouldn't hurt me any more. I couldn't do what he asked because I didn't know who the fellow was: I had never even seen him before he'd come out of the casket. Since I didn't say anything, they started in again. And there I was groaning, crying over my bad luck, sighing, and cursing my misfortune since it was always finding new ways to persecute me. I was finally able to tell them to stop and I would tell them the facts of the matter. They did, and I told them to the letter what had happened, but they wouldn't believe the truth.

Seeing that the storm wasn't letting up, I decided to outwit them if I could, and so I promised to show them the villain. They stopped hammering on me and offered me wonders. They asked me what his name was and where he lived. I told them I didn't know his name, much less that of the street he lived on, but if they wanted to carry me (it was impossible for me to go on foot because of the way they had beaten me), I would show them his house. They were delighted, and they gave me a little wine, so that I recovered my spirits a bit. Then they gathered all their weapons, and two of them picked me up under the arms like a French lady and carried me through the streets of Madrid.

The people who saw me said, "They're taking that man to jail."

And others said, "No, it's to the hospital."

And none of them were right. I was confused and stunned. I didn't know what to do or what to say. Because if I cried for help, they would complain about me to the law, and I was more afraid of that than death. It was impossible for me to run away, not only because of the beating they had given me, but because I was surrounded by the father, sons, and relatives—eight or nine of them had gotten together for the enterprise. They were walking along, like Saint George, armed to the teeth.

We crossed streets and passed by alleys without my knowing where I was or where I was taking them. We reached the Sol Gate, and I saw a gallant young fellow coming up one of the streets that led to it, prancing on tiptoe, his cape under his arm, with a huge glove in one hand and a carnation in the other, swinging his arms like he was the first cousin of the Duke of Infantado. He was moving his hands and swaying back and forth. I recognized him immediately: it was my master, the squire, who had stolen my clothes in Murcia. I don't doubt for a minute but that some saint put him there for me (because there wasn't one left in the litany that I hadn't called on). When I saw opportunity knocking, I grabbed it by the head and decided to kill two birds with one stone—taking vengeance on that bragger and freeing myself from those hangmen.

So I said to them, "Look! That libertine who stole your honor is coming this way, and he's changed his clothes."

They were blind with rage, and without further ado they asked me which one he was. I pointed him out. They fell on him, and grabbing him by the collar, they threw him to the ground and kicked, trampled, and clouted him. One of the boys, a brother of the girl, wanted to run him through with his sword, but his father stopped him and called the law officers over, and they put shackles on the squire. When I saw all the turmoil and everyone busy, I made myself scarce and hid as well as I could.

My good squire had recognized me, and thinking that those were relatives of mine demanding my clothes back, he said, "Let me go, let me go! I'll pay you enough for two suits of clothes!"

But they stopped up his mouth with their fists. Bleeding, his head pounded in, and beaten to a pulp, they took him off to jail while I left Madrid, damning my job and whoever had invented it.

XI. How Lazaro Left for His Homeland and What Happened to Him on the Way

I wanted to be on my way, but my strength wasn't equal to my intentions, and so I stayed in Madrid for a few days. I didn't get along badly there because I used a pair of crutches—since I couldn't walk without them—and I begged from door to door and from convent to convent until I had enough strength to set out. I was quick to do it because of what I heard a beggar tell who was sitting in the sun with some others, picking off fleas.

It was the story of the trunk I've just told about, but the beggar added that the man they put in jail, thinking he was the one who had been inside the chest, had proved it wasn't him. Because at the time it had all happened he was in his room; and none of his neighbors had ever seen him wearing any other clothes than the ones he had on when they arrested him. But even at that, they had still paraded him through the streets for being a vagabond, and had banished him from Madrid. The beggar also told how that man and the maiden's relatives were looking for a baggage carrier, who had contrived the whole business, and they swore that the first one who found him would run him through until he looked like a sieve.

When I heard that, I was all eyes, and I put a patch over one of them. Then I shaved off my beard like a mock priest, and the way I looked then, I was sure that not even the mother who bore me would have recognized me. I left Madrid, intending to go to Tejares to see whether fortune would disown me if I went back to the mold. I passed by the Escorial, a building that reflects the greatness of the monarch who was having it built (it wasn't finished yet) and so much so that it can be counted among the wonders of the world, although you can't say it is a very pleasant place to have it built at, since the land is barren and mountainous. But the summer air is so nice that all you have to do is sit in the shade and you won't be bothered by the heat or the cold, and the air is very healthy.

Less than three miles from there I met a band of gypsies who had set up camp in an old country house. When they saw me from a distance they thought I was one of them because my clothes seemed to promise no less; but when I got close they saw they were mistaken. They shunned me a little because, as I saw, they were holding a conference or debate on thievery. They told me that wasn't the road to Salamanca but to Valladolid. Since my business didn't force me to go to one place instead of any other, I told them that if that's the way it was, I wanted to see that city before I went back to my own town.

One of the oldest men there asked me where I was from, and when I told him Tejares, he invited me to eat with them because we were almost neighbors: he was from Salamanca. I accepted, and afterwards they asked me to tell about myself and my life. I did (they didn't have to ask me twice), with the fewest and shortest words that such great things allowed. When I came to the part about the barrel and what happened to me at the innkeeper's place in Madrid, they burst into laughter, especially a man and woman gypsy who nearly split their sides. I began to feel ashamed, and my face turned red.

The gypsy who was my neighbor saw me blushing, and he said, "Don't be ashamed, brother. These people aren't laughing at you; your life is more deserving of admiration than laughter. And since you have told us so much about yourself, it is only right that we should repay you the same way. We will put our trust in you just as you have trusted us. And if the people here will allow me, I will tell you the reason for their laughter."

Everyone told him to go ahead because they knew he was discreet and experienced enough not to let things go too far.

"For your information, then," he continued, "those people who are laughing over there are the maiden and the priest who jumped in puribus when the deluge from your barrel nearly flooded them. If they want to they can tell you how the turns of fortune have brought them to their present state."

The brand new gypsy girl asked them to let her do it, capturing the benevolence of the illustrious audience, and so, with a sonorous, peaceful, and grave voice, she told her story.

"The day I left, or leaped (to be more accurate), from my father's house and they took me off to prison, they put me in a room that was darker than it was clean and that reeked more than it was decorated. Father Urbez, who is here and won't let me lie, was put in jail until he told them he was a priest. Then they immediately gave him over to the bishop, who scolded him severely for having let himself be overcome by a drop in the ocean and for having caused such a scandal. But when he promised to be more careful and watch himself so that not even the ground would know of his comings and goings, they let him loose and told him not to say mass for a month.

"I stayed in the warden's charge, and since he was a young, handsome fellow and I was not a bad-looking girl, he took special care of me. For me, jail was a palace—a garden of pleasures. My parents were indignant at my looseness but did what they could so I could get loose. But it was useless: the warden arranged things so I wouldn't escape his hands. Meanwhile the priest, who is here with us, was walking around the prison like an Irish setter, trying to get to talk to me. He was able to do it by means of a third party who was first in the bawdry business. She dressed him up like one of her maids, in a skirt and blouse, then she put a muffler over his beard, as if he had a toothache. At this interview my escape was planned.

"The next night there was a party at the house of Count Miranda, and some gypsies were going to dance at the end of it. Canil (that's the name of Reverend Urbez now) arranged for them to help him with his plans. The gypsies did everything so well that, because of their cleverness, we got the liberty we wanted and their company, too—the best on earth. The afternoon before the party I smiled at the warden more than a cat at a tripe stand, and I made more promises than a sailor in a storm. Feeling favored by them, he answered with just as many and begged me to ask him for anything and he would give it, as long as it wasn't to lose sight of me. I thanked him very much and told him that if I lost sight of him that would be the worst thing that could happen to me. Seeing that I had struck home, I begged him—since he could do it—to take me to the party that night. He thought it would be difficult, but not to go back on his promise and because the little blind archer had wounded him with an arrow, he gave his word.

"The chief constable was in love with me, too, and he had ordered all the guards, and even the warden, to take care of me and not to move me anywhere. To keep it secret, the warden dressed me up like a page in a damask green suit, trimmed in gold. The cloak was velvet of the same color, lined with yellow satin; the brimmed cap had feathers and a little diamond band. The neck was scalloped lace, the stockings were straw-colored with large, embroidered garters, the shoes were white with a perforated design, and there was a gilded sword and dagger like those made by Ayresvola.

"We came to the hall where there were large numbers of ladies and gentlemen: the men were gallant and jovial, the ladies were elegant and beautiful, and many kept their faces covered with shawls and capes. Canil was dressed like a braggadocio, and when he saw me he came up to my side, so that I was standing between him and the warden.

"The festivities began, and I saw things I won't tell about since they're beside the point. The gypsies came out to dance and do tumbling tricks. Two of them began to have words about their tumbling; one word led to another, and the first one called the other a liar. The one who had been called a liar brought his knife down on the other one's head, and so much blood began pouring out you would have thought they had killed an ox. The people there, who thought it was a joke until then, began to run around, shouting, 'Help, help!' Some law officers ran over, and everyone reached for his sword. I pulled out my own, and when I saw it in my hand I trembled at the sight of it. They grabbed the guilty man, and a man who had been put there for that purpose by the gypsies said the warden was there and would take care of him. The chief constable called the warden over to put the murderer in his hands. The warden wanted to take me with him, but he was afraid I might be recognized, and he told me to go over to a corner he pointed out and not to move from there until he came back. When I saw that that crab louse had let go of me I took hold of Father Canil's hand. He was still by my side, and we were in the street like a shot. There we found one of these gentlemen who took us to his camp.

"When the wounded man (whom everyone believed was dead) thought we must have escaped, he got to his feet and said, 'Gentlemen, the joke is over. I'm not hurt, and we did this to brighten up the party.'

"He took off his cap, and inside was an ox bladder on top of a good steel helmet. It had been filled with blood and had burst open when the knife struck it. Everyone began to laugh at the joke except the warden, who didn't like it at all. He went back to the place where he had told me to wait, and when he didn't find me there he started looking for me. He asked an old gypsy woman if she had seen a page of such and such a description, and since she was in on our game she told him she had and that she had heard him say as he was leaving, holding a man's hand, 'Let's go hide in the convent of San Felipe.'

"He quickly went after me, but it did no good because he went east and we were running to the west.

"Before we left Madrid we exchanged my clothes for these, and they gave me two hundred pieces of silver besides. I sold the diamond band for four hundred gold pieces. And when we got here I gave these gentlemen two hundred, as Canil had promised them. That's the story of how I was set free, and if Mr. Lazaro wants anything else, let him ask. We will do for him whatever the gentleman desires."

I thanked her for the courtesy, and as best I could I took my leave of them all. The good old man walked with me for a few miles. As we were walking along I asked him if those people were all gypsies born in Egypt. He told me there wasn't a damned one from Egypt in Spain: all of them there were really priests, friars, nuns, or thieves who had escaped from jail or from their convents. But the biggest scoundrels of all were the ones who had left their monasteries, exchanging the contemplative life for the active one. The old man went back to his camp, while I rode to Valladolid on the shank's mare.

XII. What Happened to Lazaro in an Inn Three Miles outside of Valladolid

What thoughts I had all along the road about my good gypsies: their way of life, their customs, the way they behaved. It really amazed me that the law let such thieves go around so freely, since everyone knows that their life involves nothing but stealing. Theirs is an asylum—a shelter for thieves, a congregation of apostates, and a school for evil. I was especially astonished that friars would leave a life of rumination to follow the one of ruination and fatigue of the gypsies. I wouldn't have believed what the gypsy told me if he hadn't shown me a gypsy man and woman a mile from the camp, behind the walls of a shelter: he was broad-shouldered, and she was plump. He wasn't sunburned, and she wasn't tanned by harsh weather. One of them was singing a verse from the psalms of David, and the other was answering with another verse. The good old man told me that they were a friar and a nun who had come to his congregation not more than a week ago, wanting to profess a more austere life.

I came to an inn three miles from Valladolid, and I saw the old lady from Madrid, along with the young maiden of yore, sitting in the doorway. A gallant young fellow came out to call them in to eat. They didn't recognize me because of my good disguise: my patch still over one eye and my clothes worn in the roguish style. But I knew I was the Lazaro who had come out of the tomb that had been so harsh on me. I went up to them to see if they would give me anything. But they couldn't because they didn't have anything for themselves. The young man who served as their steward was so generous that, for himself, his sweetheart, and the old bawd, he'd had a tiny bit of pork liver prepared with a sauce. I could have shoveled down everything on the plate in less than two mouthfuls. The bread was as black as the tablecloth, and that looked like a penitent's tunic or a rag for cleaning stoves.

"Eat, my dove," the gentleman said. "This meal is fit for a prince."

The go-between ate without a word so as not to lose any time and because she saw there wasn't enough for all of them. They began to clean up the plate with such gusto that they removed the finish. When the poor, sad meal was over—and it had made them more hungry than full—the gentle lover made excuses by saying the inn didn't have much food.

When I saw they didn't have anything for me, I asked the innkeeper what there was to eat. He told me, "It depends how much you want to pay." He wanted to give me a few chitterlings. I asked him if he had anything else. He offered me a quarter of kid that the lover hadn't wanted because it was too expensive. I wanted to impress them, so I told him to give it to me. I sat down with it at the end of the table, and their stares were a sight to behold. With each mouthful I swallowed six eyes, because those of the lover, the girl, and the bawd were fastened on what I was eating.

"What's going on?" asked the maiden. "That poor man is eating a quarter of kid, and there was nothing for us but a poor piece of fried liver."

The young fellow answered that he had asked the innkeeper for some partridges, capons or hens, and that he had told him he didn't have anything else to offer. I knew the truth of the matter—that he had put them on that diet because he didn't want to pay or couldn't, but I decided to eat and keep quiet. The kid was like a magnet. Without warning, I found all three of them hovering over my plate.

The brazen-faced little bitch picked up a piece and said, "With your permission, brother." But before she had it, she had the piece in her mouth.

The old woman said, "Don't steal his meal from this poor sinner."

"I'm not stealing it," she answered. "I intend to pay him for it very well."

And in the same breath she began to eat so fast and furiously that it looked like she hadn't eaten in six days. The old woman took a bite to see how it tasted.

"Is it really that good?" said the young man. And he filled his mouth with an enormous piece. When I saw that they were going too far, I picked up everything on the plate and stuck it in my mouth. It was so big that it couldn't go down or up.

While I was in this struggle, two armed men came riding up to the door of the inn, wearing vests and helmets and carrying shields. Each of them had one musket at his side and another on the saddle. They dismounted and gave their mules to a foot servant. They asked the innkeeper if there was anything to eat. He told them he had a good supply of food, and if they liked they could go into the hall while he was preparing it. The old woman had gone over to the door when she heard the noise, and she came back with her hands over her face, bowing as much as a novice monk. She spoke with a wee, tiny voice and was laboriously twisting back and forth like she was going into labor.

As softly and well as she could, she said, "We're lost. Clara's brothers (Clara was the maiden's name) are outside."

The girl began to pull and tear at her hair, hitting herself so hard it was like she was possessed. The young man was courageous, and he consoled her, telling her not to worry, that he could handle everything. I was all ears, with my mouth full of kid, and when I heard that those braggers were there I thought I was going to die of fear. And I would have, too, but since my gullet was closed off, my soul didn't find the door standing open, and it went back down.

The two Cids came in, and as soon as they saw their sister and the bawd they shouted, "Here they are! At last we have them. Now they'll die!"

I was so frightened by their shouts that I fell to the floor, and when I hit I ejected the goat that was choking me. The two women got behind the young man like chicks under a hen's wing running from a hawk. Brave and graceful, he pulled out his sword and went at the brothers so furiously that their fright turned them into statues. The words froze in their mouths, and the swords in their sheaths. The young man asked them what they wanted or what they were looking for, and as he was talking he grabbed one of them and took away his sword. Then he pointed this sword at his eyes, while he held his own sword at the other one's eyes. At every movement he made with the swords, they trembled like leaves. When the old woman and the sister saw the two Rolands so subdued, they went up and disarmed them. The innkeeper came in at the noise we were all making (I had gotten up and had one of them by the beard).

It all seemed to me like the gentle bulls in my town: boys, when they see them, run away; but they gradually get more and more daring, and when they see they aren't as fierce as they look, they lose all their fear and go right up and throw all kinds of garbage on them. When I saw that those scarecrows weren't as ferocious as they looked, I plucked up my courage and attacked them more bravely than my earlier terror had allowed.

"What's this?" asked the innkeeper. "Who dares to cause such an uproar in my house?"

The women, the gentleman, and I began shouting that they were thieves who had been following us to rob us. When the innkeeper saw them without any weapons, and at our mercy, he said, "Thieves in my house!"

He grabbed hold of them and helped us put them in a cellar, not listening to one word of their protests. Their servant came back from feeding the mules, and he asked where his masters were: the innkeeper put him in with them. He took their bags, their saddle cushions, and their portmanteaus and locked them up, and he gave us the weapons as if they belonged to him. He didn't charge us for the food so that we would sign a lawsuit he had drawn up against them. He said he was a minister of the Inquisition, and as a law officer in that district, he was condemning the three of them to the galleys for the rest of their lives, and to be whipped two hundred times around the inn. They appealed to the Chancery of Valladolid, and the good innkeeper and three of his servants took them there.

When the poor fellows thought they were before the judges, they found themselves before the Inquisitors, because the sly innkeeper had put down on the record some words they had spoken against the officials of the Holy Inquisition (an unpardonable crime). They put the brothers in dark jail cells, and they couldn't write their father or ask anyone to help them the way they had thought they could.

And there we will leave them, well guarded, to get back to our innkeeper, because we met him on the road. He told us that the Inquisitors had commanded him to have the witnesses who had signed the lawsuit appear before them. But, as a friend, he was advising us to go into hiding. The young maiden gave him a ring from her finger, begging him to arrange things so we wouldn't have to appear. He promised he would. But the thief said this to make us leave, so that if they wanted to hear witnesses they wouldn't discover his chicanery (and it wasn't his first).

In two weeks Valladolid was the scene of an auto de fe, and I saw the three poor devils come out with other penitents, with gags in their mouths, as blasphemers who had dared speak against the ministers of the Holy Inquisition—a group of people as saintly and perfect as the justice they deal out. All three of them were wearing pointed hats and sanbenitos, and written on them were their crimes and the sentences they had been given. I was sorry to see that poor foot servant paying for something he hadn't done. But I didn't feel as much pity for the other two because they'd had so little on me. The innkeeper's sentence was carried out, with the addition of three hundred lashes apiece, so they were given five hundred and sent to the galleys where their fierce bravado melted away.

I sought out my fortune. Many times, on the street of Magdalena, I ran into my two women friends. But they never recognized me or were aware that I knew them. After a few days I saw the missionary-minded young maiden in the prisoners' cells where she earned enough to maintain her affair and herself. The old woman carried on her business in that city.

XIII. How Lazaro Was a Squire for Seven Women at One Time

I reached Valladolid with six silver pieces in my purse because the people who saw me looking so skinny and pale gave me money with open hands, and I didn't take it with closed ones. I went straight to the clothing store, and for four silver coins and a twenty-copper piece I bought a long baize cloak, worn out, torn and unraveled, that had belonged to a Portuguese. With that, and a high, wide-brimmed hat like a Franciscan monk's that I bought for half a silver piece, and with a cane in my hand, I took a stroll around.

People who saw me mocked me. Everyone had a different name for me. Some of them called me a tavern philosopher. Others said, "There goes Saint Peter, all dressed up for his feast day."

And still others: "Oh, Mr. Portugee, would you like some polish for your boots?"

And somebody even said I must be a quack doctor's ghost. I closed my ears like a shopkeeper and walked right past.

After I had gone down a few streets I came upon a woman dressed in a full skirt, with very elegant shoes. She also had on a silk veil that came down to her bosom and had her hand on a little boy's head. She asked me if I knew of any squires around there. I answered that I was the only one I knew of and that if she liked she could use me as her own. It was all arranged in the twinkling of an eye. She promised me sixty coppers for my meals and wages. I took the job and offered her my arm. I threw away the cane because I didn't need it anymore, and I was only using it to appear sickly and move people to pity. She sent the child home, telling him to have the maid set the table and get dinner ready. For more than two hours she took me from pillar to post, up one street and down another.

The lady told me that when she got to the first house we were going to stop at, I was to go up to the house first and ask for the master or mistress of the house, and say, "My lady, Juana Perez (that was her name), is here and would like to pay her respects."

She also told me that whenever I was with her and she stopped anywhere, I was always to take off my hat. I told her I knew what a servant's duties were, and I would carry them out.

I really wanted to see my new mistress's face, but she kept her veil over it, and I couldn't. She told me she wouldn't be able to keep me by herself but that she would arrange for some ladies who were neighbors of hers to use me, and between them they would give me the money she had promised. And meanwhile, until they all agreed—which wouldn't take long—she would give me her share. She asked me if I had a place to sleep. I told her I didn't.

"I'll get you one," she said. "My husband is a tailor, and you can sleep with his apprentices. You couldn't find a better- paying job in the whole city," she continued, "because in three days you'll have six ladies, and each of them will give you ten coppers."

I was nearly dumbstruck to see the pomposity of that woman who appeared to be, at the very least, the wife of a privileged gentleman or of some wealthy citizen. I was also astonished to see that I would have to serve seven mistresses to earn seventy poor coppers a day. But I thought that anything was better than nothing, and it wasn't hard work. That was something I fled from like the Devil, because I was always more for eating cabbage and garlic without working than for working to eat capons and hens.

When we came to her house, she gave me the veil and the shoes to give to the maid, and I saw what I was longing for. The young woman didn't look bad at all to me: she was a sprightly brunette, with a nice figure. The only thing I didn't like was that her face gleamed like a glazed earthen pot.

She gave me the ten coppers and told me to come back two times every day—at eight in the morning and three in the afternoon— to see if she wanted to go out. I went to a pastry shop, and with a ten-copper piece of pie I put an end to my day's wages. I spent the rest of the day like a chameleon because I had spent the money I'd begged along the road. I didn't dare go begging anymore because if my mistress heard about it she would eat me alive.

I went to her house at three o'clock; she told me she didn't want to go out, but she warned me that from then on she wouldn't pay me on the days she didn't go out, and that if she only went out once a day she would give me five coppers and no more. But she said that since she was giving me a place to sleep, she expected to be served before all the others, and she wanted me to call myself her servant. For the sort of bed it was, she deserved that and even more. She made me sleep with the apprentices on a large table without a damned thing to cover us but a worn-out blanket.

I spent two days on the miserable food that I could afford with ten coppers. Then the wife of a tanner joined the fraternity, and she haggled over the ten coppers for more than an hour. Finally, after five days, I had seven mistresses, and my wages were seventy coppers. I began to eat splendidly: the wine I drank wasn't the worst, but it wasn't the best either (I didn't want to overreach my hand and have it lopped off). The five other women were the wife of a constable, a gardener's wife, the niece (or so she said) of a chaplain in the Discalced order, a goodlooking, sprightly girl, and a tripe merchant. This last woman I liked best because whenever she gave me the ten coppers she invited me to have some tripe soup, and before I left her house I would have guzzled down three or four bowlsful.

So I was living as content as could be. The last mistress was a devout woman: I had more to do with her than with the others because all she ever did was visit with friars, and when she was alone with them she was in her glory. Her house was like a beehive: some coming, others going, and they all came with their sleeves stuffed with things for her. For me, so I would be a faithful secretary, they brought some pieces of meat from their meals, which they put in their sleeves. I have never in my life seen a more hypocritical woman than she was. When she walked down the street she never took her eyes off the ground; her rosary was always in her hand, and she would always be praying on it in the streets. Every woman who knew her begged her to pray to God for them since her prayers were so acceptable to Him. She told them she was a great sinner (and that was no lie), but she was lying with the truth.

Each of my mistresses had her own special time for me to come. When one of them said she didn't want to go out, I went to the next one's house, until I finished my rounds. They told me what time to come back for them and without fail, because if I (sinner that I am) was even a little bit late, the lady would insult me in front of everyone she visited, and she would threaten me, saying that if I kept being so careless she would get another squire who was more diligent, careful, and punctual. Anyone hearing her shout and threaten me so haughtily undoubtedly thought she was paying me two pieces of silver every day and a salary of three hundred silver pieces a year besides. When my mistresses walked down the street each one looked like the wife of the judge over all Castile, or at least, of a judge of the Chancery.

One day it happened that the chaplain's niece and the constable's wife met in a church, and both of them wanted to go home at the same time. The quarrel about which one I would take home first was so loud that it was as though we were in jail. They grabbed hold of me and pulled—one at one side and one at the other—so fiercely that they tore my cloak to shreds. And there I stood, stark naked, because I didn't have a damned thing under it but some ragged underwear that looked like a fish net. The people who saw the fish hook peeping out from the torn underwear laughed their heads off. The church was like a tavern: some were making fun of poor Lazaro; others were listening to the two women dig up their grandparents. I was in such a hurry to gather up the pieces of my cloak that had fallen in their ripeness that I didn't get a chance to listen to what they were saying. I only heard the widow say, 'Where does this whore get all her pride? Yesterday she was a water girl, and today she wears taffeta dresses at the expense of the souls in purgatory.

The other woman answered, "This one, the old gossip, got her black frocks at bargain prices from those who pay with a Deo Gratias, or a 'be charitable in God's name.' And if I was a water girl yesterday, she's a hot-air merchant today."

The people there separated the women because they had begun to pull each other's hair. I finished picking up the pieces of my poor cloak, and I asked a devout woman there for two pins. Then I fixed it as well as I could and covered up my private parts.

I left them quarreling and went to the tailor's wife's house. She had told me to be there at eleven because she had to go to dinner at a friend's house. When she saw how ragged I looked, she shouted at me, "Do you think you're going to earn my money and escort me like a picaro? I could have another squire with stylish trousers, breeches, a cape and hat, for less than I pay you. And you're always getting drunk on what I give you."

What do you mean, getting drunk? I thought to myself. With seventy coppers that I make a day, at most? And many days my mistresses don't even leave their houses just so that they won't have to pay me a cent. The tailor's wife had them stitch together the pieces of my cloak, and they were in such a hurry that they put some of the pieces on top that belonged on the bottom. And that's the way I went with her.

XIV. Where Lazaro Tells What Happened to Him at a Dinner

We went flying along like a friar who has been invited out to dinner because the lady was afraid there wouldn't be enough left for her. We reached her friend's house, and inside were other women who had been invited, too. They asked my mistress if I would be able to guard the door; she told them I could. They said to me, "Stay here, brother. Today you'll eat like a king."

Many gallant young men came, each one pulling something out of his pocket: this one a partridge, that one a hen; one took out a rabbit, another one a couple of pigeons; this one a little mutton, that one a piece of loin; and someone brought out sausage or blackpudding. One of them even took out a pie worth a silver piece, wrapped up in his handkerchief. They gave it to the cook, and in the meantime they were frolicking around with the ladies, romping with them like donkeys in a new field of rye. It isn't right for me to tell what happened there or for the reader to even imagine it.

After these rituals there came the victuals. The ladies ate the Aves, and the young men drank the ite misa est. Everything left on the table the ladies wrapped in their handkerchiefs and put in their pockets. Then the men pulled the dessert out of theirs: some, apples; others, cheese; some, olives; and one of them, who was the cock of the walk and the one who was fooling with the tailor's wife, brought out a half-pound of candied fruit. I really liked that way of keeping your meal so close, in case you need it. And I decided right then that I would put three or four pockets on the first pair of pants God would give me, and one of them would be of good leather, sewn up well enough to pour soup into. Because if those gentlemen who were so rich and important brought everything in their pockets and the ladies carried things that were cooked in theirs, I—who was only a whore's squire—could do it, too.

We servants went to eat, and there wasn't a damned thing left for us but soup and bread sops, and I was amazed to see that those ladies hadn't stuck that up their sleeves. We had barely begun when we heard a tremendous uproar in the hall where our masters were: they were referring to their mothers and discussing what sort of men their fathers had been. They left off talking and started swinging, and since variety is necessary in everything, there was hitting, slapping, pinching, kicking, and biting. They were grabbing one another's hair and pulling it out; they pounded each other so much you would think they were village boys in a religious procession. As far as I could find out, the quarrel broke out because some of the men didn't want to give or pay those women anything: they said that what the women had eaten was enough.

It happened that some law officers were coming up the street, and they heard the noise and knocked on the door and called out, "Open up, in the name of the law!"

When they heard this, some of the people inside ran one way, and others another way. Some left behind their cloaks, and others their swords, one left her shoes, another her veil. So they all disappeared, and each one hid as best he could. I had no reason to run away, so I stood there, and since I was the doorman, I opened the door so they wouldn't accuse me of resisting the law. The first officer who came in grabbed me by the collar and said I was under arrest. When they had me in their hands, they locked the door and went looking for the people who had been making all the noise. There was no bedroom, dressing room, basement, wine cellar, attic, or privy they didn't look in.

Since the officers didn't find anyone, they took my statement. I confessed from A to Z about everyone at the gathering and what they had done. The officers were amazed, since there were as many as I'd said, that not one of them had turned up. To tell the truth, I was amazed, too, because there had been twelve men and six women. Simple as I was, I told them (and I really believed it) that I thought all the people who had been there and made that noise were goblins. They laughed at me, and the constable asked his men who had been to the wine cellar if they'd looked everywhere carefully. They said they had, but not satisfied with this, he made them light a torch, and when they went in the door they saw a cask rolling around. The officers were terrified, and they started to run away, crying, "For God's sake, that fellow was right; there are nothing but spooks here!"

The constable was shrewder, and he stopped the officers, saying he wasn't afraid of the Devil himself. Then he went over to the cask and took off the lid, and inside he found a man and a woman. I don't want to tell how he found them so I won't offend the pure ears of the wholesome, high-minded reader. I will only say that the violence of their movements had made the cask roll around and was the cause of their misfortune and of showing in public what they were doing in private.

The officers pulled them out: he looked like Cupid with his arrow, and she like Venus with her quiver. Both of them were as naked as the day they were born because, when the officers had knocked, they were in bed, kissing the holy relics, and with the alarm they didn't have a chance to pick up their clothes. And, to hide, they had climbed into that empty cask, where they continued their devout exercise.

Everyone stood there, agape at the beauty of these two. Then they threw two cloaks over them and put them in the custody of two officers, and they started looking for the others. The constable discovered a large earthen jug filled with oil, and inside he found a man fully dressed and up to his chest in the oil. As soon as they saw him he tried to jump out, but he didn't do it so agilely that the jug and he both didn't tip over. The oil flew out and covered the officers from head to foot, staining them without any respect. They stood there cursing the job and the whore who taught it to them. The oiled man saw that instead of grabbing him they were avoiding him like the plague, and he began to run away.

The constable shouted, "Stop him! Stop him!" But they all made
room for him to go past. He went out a back door, pissing oil.
What he wrung from his clothes he used to light the lamp of Our
Lady of Afflictions for more than a month.

The law officers stood there, bathed in oil, and cursing whoever had brought them to the place. And so was I, because they said I was the pander and they were going to tar and feather me. They went out like fritters from the frying pan, leaving a trail wherever they walked. They were so irate that they swore to God and to the four holy Gospels that they would hang everyone they found. We prisoners trembled. They went over to the storeroom to look for the others. They went in, and from the top of a door a bag of flour was poured down on them, blinding them all.

They shouted, "Stop, in the name of the law!"

If they tried to open their eyes, they were immediately closed up with flour and water. The men holding us let go so they could help the constable who was yelling like a madman. They had hardly gotten inside when their eyes were covered with flour and water, too. They were wandering around like they were playing blindman's bluff, bumping into and clouting each other so much they broke their jaws and teeth.

When we saw that the officers were done in, we threw ourselves on them, and they attacked each other so wildly that they fell, exhausted, to the floor while blows and kicks rained and hailed down on top of them. Finally, they didn't shout or move any more than dead men. If one of them tried to open his mouth, it was immediately filled with flour and stuffed like a capon at a poultry farm. We bound their hands and feet and carried them along like hogs to the wine cellar. We threw them in the oil like fish to be fried, and they squirmed around like pigs in a mire. Then we locked up the doors, and we all went home.

The owner of that one had been in the country, and when he came back he found the doors locked and that no one answered when he called. A niece of his had loaned out his house for that feast, and she had gone back to her father's, afraid of what her uncle would do. The man had the doors unlocked, and when he saw his house sown with flour and anointed with oil, he flew into a rage and began shouting like a drunkard. He went to the wine cellar and found his oil spilled all over and the law officers wallowing in it. He was so angry to see his home devastated that he picked up a cudgel and hammered away on the constable and the officers, leaving them half dead. He called his neighbors over, and they helped drag them out to the street, and there boys threw mud, garbage, and filth on the officers and the constable. They were so full of flour no one recognized them. When they came to and found themselves in the street, free, they took to their heels. Then people could very well have said, "Stop the name of the law- -it's running away!"

They left behind their cloaks, swords, and daggers and didn't dare go back for them so that no one would find out what had happened.

The owner of the house kept everything that was left behind as compensation for the damage that had been done. When I came out, ready to leave, I found a cloak that wasn't at all bad, and I took it and left mine there. I thanked God I had come out ahead this time (something new for me), since I was always getting the short end of things. I went to the house of the tailor's wife. I found the house in an uproar, and the tailor, her husband, was thrashing her with a stick for having come back alone without her veil or shoes and for running down the street with more than a hundred boys after her. I got there at just the right time because, as soon as the tailor saw me, he left his wife and sailed into me with a blow that finished off the few teeth I still had. Then he kicked me ten or twelve times in the belly, and that made me throw up what little I had eaten.

"You damned pimp!" he cried. "You mean you're not ashamed to come back to my house? I'll give you enough payment to settle every score—past and present."

He called his servants, and they brought a blanket and tossed me in it to their own pleasure, which was my grief. They left me for dead and laid me out on a bench like that. It was nighttime when I recovered my senses, and I tried to get up and walk. But I fell to the ground and broke an arm. The next morning I made my way to the door of a church, little by little, and there I begged with a pitiful voice from the people going in.

XV. How Lazaro Became a Hermit

Stretched out at the door of the church and reviewing my past life, I thought over the misery I had gone through from the day I began to serve the blind man down to the present. And I came to the conclusion that even if a man always rises early, that doesn't make dawn come any earlier, and if you work hard, that won't necessarily make you rich. And there's a saying that goes like this: "The early riser fails where God's help succeeds." I put myself in His hands so that the end would be better than the beginning and the middle had been.

A venerable, white-bearded hermit was next to me with his staff and a rosary in his hand, and at the end of the rosary hung a skull the size of a rabbit's.

When the good Father saw me in such misery he began to console me with kind, soft words, and he asked me where I was from and what had happened to bring me to such a pitiful state. I told him very briefly the long process of my bitter pilgrimage. He was astonished by what I said and showed his pity on me by inviting me to his hermitage. I accepted the invitation, and as well as I could (which wasn't painlessly) I reached the oratory with him, a few miles from there, in the side of a hill. Attached to it was a little house with a bedroom and a bed. In the patio was a cistern with fresh water, and it was used to water a garden—neater and better cared for than it was large.

"I have been living here," said the good old man, "for twenty years, apart from the commotion and anxiety of man. This, brother, is earthly paradise. Here I contemplate both divine and human matters. Here I fast when I am well fed, and I eat when I am hungry. Here I stay awake when I can't sleep, and I sleep when I grow tired. Here I have solitude when no one is with me, and I have company when I am not alone. Here I sing when I am happy, and I cry when I am sad. Here I work when I'm not idle, and I am idle when I don't work. Here I think about my past bad life, and I contemplate the good one I have now. And, finally, here nothing is known, and the knowledge of all things is attained."

I rejoiced in my heart to listen to the cunning hermit, and I begged him to tell me about hermit life, since it seemed to be the best in the world.

"What do you mean, the best?" he answered. "Only a person who has enjoyed it can know how good it really is. But we don't have time to speak further of this because it's time to have dinner."

I begged him to heal my arm because it hurt very much. He did it so easily that from then on it never bothered me. We ate like kings and drank like Germans. After the meal was over, and while we were taking an afternoon nap, my good hermit began to shout, "I'm dying! I'm dying!"

I got up and saw that he looked like he was about to breathe his last. And I asked him if he really was dying.

"Yes, yes, yes!" he answered.

And still repeating "yes," he died an hour later.

But at the time he told me that, I was very upset. I realized that if the man died without witnesses, people might say I had killed him, and it would cost me the life I had kept up with such hard work. And it wouldn't take very weighty witnesses for that because I looked more like a robber than an honest man. I immediately ran out of the hermitage to see if anyone was around who could be a witness to the old man's death. I looked everywhere and saw a flock of sheep nearby. I quickly (although painfully because of the beating I had gotten in the tailor skirmish) went toward it. I found six or seven shepherds and four or five shepherdesses resting in the shade of some willows, next to a shining, clear spring. The men were playing instruments and the women were singing. Some were capering, others were dancing. One of the men was holding a woman's hand, another was resting with his head on a woman's lap. And they were spending the heat of the day wooing each other with sweet words.

I ran up to them, terrified, and begged them to come with me right away because the old hermit was dying. Some of them came along while others stayed behind to watch over the sheep. They went into the hermitage and asked the good hermit if he was approaching death. He said, "Yes" (but that was a lie because he wasn't going anywhere: it was death that was approaching him, and against his will). When I saw that he was still in his rut about saying yes, I asked him if he wanted those shepherds to be witnesses for his last will and testament. He answered, "Yes."

I asked him if he was leaving me as his sole and lawful heir. He said, "Yes." I went on, asking if he acknowledged and confessed that everything he possessed or might possess he was leaving to me for services and other things he had received from me. Again he said, "Yes."

I was wishing that would be the last noise he'd make, but I saw that he still had a little breath left in him, and, so that he wouldn't do me any harm with it, I went on with my questions and had one of the shepherds write down everything he said. The shepherd wrote on a wall with a piece of coal since we didn't have an inkwell or a pen.

I asked him if he wanted that shepherd to sign for him since he was in no position to do it himself, and he died, saying, "Yes, yes, yes."

We went ahead and buried him: we dug a grave in his garden (and did it all very quickly because I was afraid he might come back to life). I invited the shepherds to have something to eat; they didn't want to because it was time to feed their sheep. They went away, giving me their condolences.

I locked the door of the hermitage and walked all around the inside. I found a huge jug of good wine, another one full of oil, and two crocks of honey. He had two sides of bacon, a good quantity of jerked beef, and some dried fruit. I liked all of this very much, but it wasn't what I was looking for. I found his chests full of linens, and in the corner of one of them was a woman's dress. This surprised me, but what surprised me even more was that such a well-provided man wouldn't have any money. I went to the grave to ask him where he had put it.

It seemed to me that after I had asked him he answered: "You stupid fellow. Do you think that living out here in the country the way I do, at the mercy of thieves and bandits, I would keep it in a coffer where I'd be in danger of losing what I loved more than my own life?"

It was as if I had really heard this inspiration from his mouth, and it made me look around in every corner. But when I didn't find anything, I thought: If I were going to hide money here so no one else could find it, where would I put it? And I said to myself: In that altar. I went over to it and took the frontpiece of the altar off the pedestal, which was made of mud and clay. On one side I saw a crack that a silver coin could fit into. My blood started humming, and my heart began to flutter. I picked up a spade, and in less than two clouts I had half the altar on the ground, and I discovered the relics that were buried there. I found a jar full of coins. I counted them, and there were six hundred silver pieces. I was so overjoyed at the discovery that I thought I would die. I took the money out of there and dug a hole outside the hermitage where I buried it so that if they turned me out of there I would have what I loved most outside.

When this was done I put on the hermit's garb and went into town to tell the prior of the brotherhood what had happened. But first I didn't forget to put the altar back the way it had been before. I found all the members of the brotherhood that the hermitage depended on together there. The hermitage was dedicated to Saint Lazarus, and I thought that was a good sign for me. The members saw that I was already gray-haired and of an exemplary appearance, which is the most important part of positions like this. There was, however, one difficulty, and that was that I didn't have a beard. I had sheared it off such a short time before that it hadn't yet sprung back. But even with this, seeing by the shepherds' story that the dead man had left me as his heir, they turned the hermitage over to me.

About this business of beards, I remember what a friar told me once: In his order, and even in the most reformed orders, they wouldn't make anyone a Superior unless he had a good beard. So it happened that some of them who were very capable of being in that position were excluded, and others who were woolly were given the position (as if good administration depended on hair and not on mature, capable understanding).

They warned me to live with the virtuous character and good reputation my predecessor had had, which was so great that everyone thought him a saint. I promised them I would live like a Hercules. They advised me to beg for alms only on Tuesdays and Saturdays because if I did it any other day the friars would punish me. I promised to do whatever they ordered me, and I especially didn't want to make enemies of them because I had previously experienced the taste of their hands. I began to beg for alms from door to door, with a low, humble, devout tone, the way I had learned in the blind man's school. I didn't do this because I was in need, but because it's the beggar's character that the more they have the more they ask for and the more pleasure they get from doing it. The people who heard me calling, "Alms for the candles of Saint Lazarus," and didn't recognize my voice, came out their doors and were astonished when they saw me. They asked me where Father Anselmo was (that was the name of the good old fellow). I told them he had died.

Some said, "May he rest in peace, he was such a good man

Others said, "His soul is in the glory of God."

And some, "God bless the man whose life was like his: he ate nothing warm for six years."

And others, "He lived on bread and water."

Some of the foolish pious women got down on their knees and called on the name of Father Anselmo. One asked me what I had done with his garb. I told her I was wearing it. She took out some scissors, and without saying what she wanted she began to cut a piece from the first part she found, which was the crotch. When I saw her going after that part, I started to shout because I thought she was trying to castrate me.

When she saw how upset I was, she said, "Don't worry, brother. I want some relics from that blessed man, and I'll pay you for the damage to your robe."

"Oh," some said, "before six months are up they are certain to canonize him because he's performed so many miracles."

So many people came to see his grave that the house was always full, so I had to move the grave out to a shelter in front of the hermitage. From then on I didn't beg alms for the candles of Saint Lazarus, but for the blessed Father Anselmo. I have never understood this business of begging alms to light the candles of saints. But I don't want to continue on this note because it will sound bad. I wasn't at all interested in going to the city because I had everything I wanted at the hermitage. But, so no one could say I was rich and that's why I didn't go out begging alms, I went the next day, and there something happened to me that you'll find out if you read:

XVI. How Lazaro Decided to Marry Again

Good fortune has more value than horse or mule; for an unlucky man a sow will bear mongrels. Many times we see men rise from the dust of the earth, and without knowing how, they find themselves rich, honored, feared, and held in esteem. If you ask: Is this man wise? They'll tell you: Like a mule. Is he discreet? Like an ass. Does he have any good qualities? Those of a dunce. Well, how did he become so wealthy? They'll answer: It was the work of fortune.

Other people, on the contrary, who are discreet, wise, prudent, with many good qualities, capable of ruling a kingdom, find themselves beaten down, cast aside, poor, and made into a rag for the whole world. If you ask why, they'll tell you misfortune is always following them.

And I think it was misfortune that was always pursuing and persecuting me, giving the world a sample and example of what it could do. Because since the world was made there has never been a man attacked so much by this damned fortune as I was.

I was going down a street, begging alms for Saint Lazarus as usual, because in the city I didn't beg for the blessed Anselmo— that was only for the naive and ignorant who came to touch the rosary at his grave, where they said many miracles took place. I went up to a door, and giving my usual cry I heard some people call me from a stairway, "Why don't you come up, Father? Come on, come on, what are you doing, staying down there?"

I started to climb the stairs, which were a little dark, and halfway up some women clasped me about the neck; others held onto my hands and stuck theirs in my pockets And since we were in the dark, when one of the women reached for my pocket she hit upon my locket.

She gave a cry, and said, 'What's this?"

I answered, "A little bird that will come out if you touch it."

They all asked why they hadn't seen me for a week. When we reached the top of the stairs they saw me in the light from the windows, and they stood there looking at each other like wooden puppets. Then they burst out laughing and laughed so hard I wondered if they would ever stop. None of them could talk. The first to speak was a little boy who said, "That isn't Daddy."

After those bursts of laughter had subsided a little, the women (there were four of them) asked me what saint I was begging alms for. I told them for Saint Lazarus.

"Why are you begging for him?" they asked. "Isn't Father Anselmo feeling well?"

"Well?" I answered. "He doesn't feel bad at all because a week ago he died."

When they heard that, they burst into tears, and if the laughter had been loud before, their wailing was even louder. Some of them screamed, others pulled their hair, and with all of them carrying on together, their music was as grating as a choir of hoarse nuns.

One of them said, "What will I do. Oh, me! Here I am without a husband, without protection, without consolation. Where will I go? Who will help me? What bitter news! What a misfortune!"

Another was lamenting with these words: "Oh, my son-in-law and my lord! How could you leave without saying good-by? Oh, my little grandchildren, now you are orphans, abandoned! Where is your good father?"

The children were carrying the soprano of that unharmonious music. They were all crying and shouting, and there was nothing but weeping and wailing. When the water of that great deluge let up a little they asked me how and what he had died from. I told them about it and about the will he had made, leaving me as his lawful heir and successor. And then it all started. The tears turned into rage, their wails into curses, and their sighs into threats.

"You're a thief, and you killed him to rob him, but you won't get away with it," said the youngest girl. "That hermit was my husband, and these three children are his, and if you don't give us all his property, we'll have you hanged. And if the law doesn't do it there are swords and daggers to kill you a thousand times if you had a thousand lives."

I told them there were reliable witnesses there when he'd made his will.

"That's a pack of lies," they said. "Because the day you say he died, he was here, and he told us he didn't have any company."

When I realized that he hadn't given his will to a notary, and that those women were threatening me, along with the experience I'd had with the law and with lawsuits, I decided to be courteous to them. I wanted to try to get hold of what I would lose if it came into the hands of the law. Besides, the new widow's tears had touched my heart. So I told them to calm down, they wouldn't lose anything with me; that if I had accepted the inheritance, it was only because I didn't know the dead man was married—in fact, I had never heard of hermits being married.

Putting aside all their sadness and melancholy, they began to laugh, saying that it was easy to see that I was new and inexperienced in that position since I didn't know that when people talked about solitary hermits they didn't mean they had to give up the company of women. In fact, there wasn't one who didn't have at least one woman to spend some time with after he was through contemplating, and together they would engage in active exercises—so sometimes he would imitate Martha and other times Mary. Because they were people who had a better understanding of the will of God they knew that He doesn't want man to be alone. So, like obedient sons, they have one or two women they maintain, even if it is by alms.

"And this one was especially obedient because he maintained four: this poor widow, me (her mother), these two (her sisters), and these three children who are his sons (or, at least, he considered them his)."

Then the woman they called his wife said she didn't want them to call her the widow of that rotten old carcass who hadn't remembered her the day he died, and that she would swear those children weren't his, and from then on she was renouncing the marriage contract.

"What is that marriage contract?" I asked.

The mother said, "The marriage contract I drew up when my daughter married that ungrateful wretch was this…. But before I tell that, I'll have to give you the background.

"I was living in a village called Duennas, twenty miles from here. I was left with these three daughters from three different fathers who were, as near as I can figure out, a monk, an abbot, and a priest (I have always been devoted to the Church). I came to this city to live, to get away from all the gossiping that always goes on in small towns. Everyone called me the ecclesiastical widow because, unfortunately, all three men had died. And even though others came to take their place, they were only mediocre men of lower positions, and not being content with the sheep, they went after the young lambs.

"Well, when I saw the obvious danger we were in and that what we earned wouldn't make us rich, I called a halt and set up my camp here. And with the fame of the three girls, they swarmed here like bees to honey. And the ones I favored most of all were the clergy because they were silent, rich, family men, and understanding. Among them, the Father of Saint Lazarus came here to beg alms. And when he saw this girl, she went to his heart, and in his saintliness and simplicity he asked me to give her to him as his wife.

"So I did, under the following conditions and articles:

"First, he would have to maintain our household, and what we could earn ourselves would go for our clothes and our savings.

"Second, because he was a little decrepit, if my daughter should at any time take on an ecclesiastical assistant, he would be as quiet as if he were at mass.

"Third, that all the children she would have, he would have to take as his own and promise them what he did or might possess. And if my daughter didn't have any children, he would make her his sole and lawful heir.

"Fourth, that he would not come into our house when he saw a jug, a pot, or any other vessel in the window because that was a signal that there wasn't any place for him.

"Fifth, that when he was in the house and someone else came, he would have to hide where we told him until the other person left.

"Sixth and last, that twice a week he would have to bring us some friend or acquaintance who would provide us with a great feast.

"These are the articles of the marriage contract," she continued, "that that poor wretch and my daughter swore to. The marriage took place without their having to go to a priest because he said it wasn't necessary. The most important part, he said, was for there to be mutual agreement about their wishes and intentions."

I was astonished at what that second Celestina* was telling me and at the marriage contract she had used to marry her daughter. I was confused: I didn't know what to say. But they lit up the road to my desire because the young widow grabbed me around the neck and said, "If that poor fellow had had the face of this angel, I would really have loved him."

And with that she kissed me. After that kiss something started up in me—I don't know what it was—and I began to burn inside. I told her that if she wanted to stop being a widow and take me as her own, I would keep not only the contract of the old man but any other articles she wanted to add. They were happy with that and said they only wanted me to give them everything in the hermitage for safekeeping. I promised to do that, but I intended to hold back the money in case I ever needed it.

The marriage ceremony was to take place the next morning, and that afternoon they sent a cart to take away everything but the nails that held the place together. They didn't overlook the altarcloth or the saint's clothing. I was so bedazzled that if they had asked me for the phoenix or the waters from the river Styx, I would have given it to them. The only thing they left me was a poor piece of sackcloth to lie on like a dog. When that lady—my future wife—who had come with the cart saw that there wasn't any money she was angry. Because the old man had told her that he had some, but he didn't say where. She asked me if I knew where the treasure was. I told her I didn't. Being astute, she took me by the hand so we could go looking for it. She led me to every corner and crevice in the hermitage, including the base of the altar. And when she saw that it had recently been fixed, she became very suspicious.

She hugged and kissed me and said, "My life, tell me where that money is so we can have a happy wedding with it."

I still denied that I knew anything about any money. She took my hand again and led me outside to walk around the hermitage, watching my face all the time. When we got to the place where I had hidden it, my eyes darted there. She called her mother and told her to look under a stone I had put on top of it. She found it, and I found my death.

She feigned a smile and said, "Look. With this we'll have a wonderful life."

She caressed me over and over again, and then, since it was getting late, they went back to the city, telling me to come to their house in the morning and we would have the happiest wedding there had ever been. I hope to God it's full of roses and not thorns, I said to myself.

All that night I was caught between the hope that those women wouldn't trick me and the fear that they would, although I thought it was impossible for there to be any trickery in a woman who had such a good face. I was expecting to enjoy that little pigeon, so the night seemed like a year to me.

It wasn't yet dawn when I closed up my hermitage and went to get married (as if that were nothing), not remembering that I already was. I arrived just as they were getting up. They welcomed me so joyfully that I really thought I was fortunate, and with all my fears gone, I began to act right at home. We ate so well and the food was so good that I thought I was in paradise. They had invited six or seven lady friends of theirs in to eat. After dinner we danced, and although I didn't know how, they made me do it. To see me dancing with my hermit's garb on was a sight.

When evening came, after a good supper and even better drinking, they took me into a nicely decorated room where there was a good bed. They told me to get into it. While my wife was undressing, a maid pulled off my shoes and stockings and told me to take off my shirt because, for the ceremonies that would take place, I had to be completely naked. I obeyed her. Then all the women came into my room with my wife behind them, dressed in a shift, and one of the women was carrying the train.

The first thing they made me do was kiss her arse, saying that was the first ceremony. After this, four of them grabbed me—two by the feet and two by the arms—and with great care they tied four ropes to me and fastened the ends to the four bedposts. I was like a Saint Andrew on the Cross. They all began to laugh when they saw my jack-in-the-box, and they threw a jar of cold water on it. I gave out a terrible shriek, but they told me to be quiet, or else. They took a huge pot of hot water and stuck my head in it. I was burning up, and the worst part was that if I tried to shout they whipped me. So I decided to let them do what they wanted. They sheared off my beard, my hair, my eyebrows and eyelashes.

"Be patient," they said. "The ceremonies will be over soon, and you will enjoy what you desire so much."

I begged them to let me go because my appetite had gone away.

They cut away the hair from my crotch, and one of them who was the boldest took out a knife and said to the others, "Hold him down tight, and I'll cut off his plums so he'll never again feel tempted to get married. This hermit thought everything we told him was the gospel truth. Why, it wasn't even the epistle. He trusted women, and now he'll see what the payment is."

When I saw my precious stones in danger, I pulled so hard that I broke a rope and one of the bedposts. I grabbed my jewels with one hand and clutched them so that even if they had cut off my fingers, they couldn't have gotten to them. So they wouldn't break the bed completely apart, they untied me and wrapped me in a sheet. Then they gave me such a blanketing that they left me half dead.

"These, my dear sir," they said, "are the ceremonies our wedding begins with. If you want to come back tomorrow, we'll finish the rest."

The four of them picked me up and carried me far away from their house. They put me down in the middle of a street. And when morning came, boys began to chase and beat me, so that, to get away from their hands, I ran into a church next to the high altar where they were saying mass. When the priests saw that figure, which must have looked like the devil they paint at Saint Michael's feet, they began to run away, and I was right behind them, trying to get away from the boys.

The people in the church were shouting. Some said, "Look! There goes the devil!" Others said, "Look at the madman!"

I was shouting, too, but that I wasn't a devil or a madman; I was only a poor fellow who looked like that because of my sins. At this, they all quieted down. The priests went back to their mass, and the sacristan gave me a cover from a tomb to wrap myself in. I went over to a corner and thought about the reverses of fortune and that no matter where you go bad luck is there. So I decided to stay in that church for the rest of my life. And if past misfortunes were any indication, my life wouldn't be a long one. Besides, I wanted to save the priests the trouble of going somewhere else to get me when I was dead.

This, dear reader, is all of the Second Part of the life of Lazarillo. I have neither added nor subtracted anything from what I heard my great-grandmother tell. If you enjoyed it, wait for the Third Part: you will find it no less enjoyable.

*[The unforgettable and infamous old bawd of the Spanish masterpiece La Celestina (ca. 1492)—R.S.R.]

THE END