“But,” cried I, infected by the friar’s frankness, “don’t you carry a copper of your own?”
“Why, to be sure I do not, most of the time, nor half of one.”
“How is that possible?”
“Why, good gracious, my vow of poverty—is that only a joke?”
“I am very sorry I don’t smoke,” I exclaimed, “if only for this once.”
“Don’t distress yourself, friend, for we friars don’t mind it when we cannot indulge a bad habit. Besides, when I get to Tejo I’ll have more good things than I want. You’ll see how Señor Aldao will rush forward to offer me a cigar.”
He said this with a cheerful and philosophical air, and proceeded on his way in good spirits, walking faster than I could. A question kept springing to my lips, and I finally ventured to put it, “Doesn’t it mortify you to go without shoes?”
“No, sir,” he replied, slowly, as though trying to recollect whether it really did annoy him. “I did miss my shoes at first, or rather, not them, but my stockings, because I never wore any but those which my mother used to knit for me, and they were very heavy. Oh, I am mistaken; I have worn stockings, and that of the finest silk, not so very long ago. I say this, that you may not fancy, because I am a friar, that I have never enjoyed such luxuries. However, that is foreign to our subject. But in regard to your question, which I wish to answer categorically, you must know that since I have been going around without shoes, I have never suffered with corns, chilblains, bunions, or anything of the kind.”
As he spoke, he thrust out his foot, which was really well-shaped, and had none of the deformities caused by wearing shoes.
“And just observe, sir, what habit will do. It seems to me now that I am cleaner this way. I have come to think that shoes and stockings serve only to hide nastiness. No one who goes without shoes has really dirty feet, no matter how much he may walk or how hot it may be; especially if he has the habit I have”—suiting the action to the word, he drew aside a few steps, and approaching the little brook which flowed by the side of the pathway, between reeds and briers, took off his sandals, tucked up his gown a little, and thrust first one foot and then the other into the flowing stream. After he had dried them on the grass, he put on his sandals, and looked at me with a triumphant air. I smiled under the impulse of an idea, or, rather, a very warm feeling, which might be expressed in these words: