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.