Lazaro, or, to give him his diminutive name, Lazarillo, was the son of a miller who plied his trade by the banks of the river Tormes, from which he took his name. When he was only ten years old his father was killed in a campaign against the Moors, and as his mother was unable to support him she gave him into the charge of a blind man who wandered about the country as a beggar. While at the bridge of Salamanca the boy noticed an animal carved in stone in the form of a bull, and was told by his master that if he placed his ear to the effigy he would hear it roar. He did so, when the old man gave his head such a violent thump against it as almost to bereave him of sense, and, laughing brutally, told him that a blind man’s boy must needs have his wits about him. “I have no silver or gold to give you,” said he, “but what is far better, I can impart to you the result of my experiences, which will always enable you to live.”
The little Lazarillo had much difficulty in getting enough food to keep body and soul together. The old beggar kept his bread and meat in a linen knapsack, the neck of which was tightly secured. But the boy made a small rent in one of the seams of the bag, and thus helped himself to the choicest pieces of meat, bacon, and sausage. It was his task also to receive the alms which charitable people bestowed on the blind man, and part of this he secreted in his mouth, until, by dint of practice, he was able to hide a goodly treasure of copper money in that receptacle. It irked him on a hot day to watch the beggar drinking his wine while he himself went thirsty. The wine was kept in a large jar, and from time to time he managed to get a sip of the cooling liquor. But his master soon discovered the practice and kept the jar between his knees, with his hand on its mouth. Lazarillo therefore bored a small hole in the bottom of the jar, which he closed with wax. At dinner-time, when the blind beggar sat over the fire, the wax melted, and Lazarillo, putting his mouth to the hole, absorbed the wine. His master was enraged and surprised when he found that the liquor had vanished, and attributed its disappearance to magical means. But the next time his charge attempted the feat the crafty old mendicant seized the jar with both hands and dealt him such a blow on the face with it as to break the vessel and wound the boy severely. From that day Lazarillo bore a grudge against the sightless old tyrant, and took a sly revenge by guiding him over the worst roads he could find and through the deepest mud.
Resolving to quit a service the perquisites of which were all kicks and no halfpence, Lazarillo led his master to the Arcade at Escalona, beside which a brook ran rather swiftly. In order to cross this it was necessary either to jump or to wade almost up to the neck in water, and when this was explained to him the old beggar chose the former method of negotiating it. The crafty Lazarillo told him that the narrowest place was opposite a great stone pillar, and the wretched mendicant, taking a step or two backward to give him impetus, leapt with such force that he crashed into the pillar, at the bottom of which he immediately fell unconscious. With a shout of triumph Lazarillo ran off, and from that day never set eyes upon the blind man again.
The next master whose service he entered was a priest, and if his experiences with the beggar had been unhappy, they were as nothing to what he now had to bear, for the holy man was a miser of the most pitiful description, and starved him in a shameful manner. He kept his bread in a large wooden chest, to which Lazarillo got a travelling tinker to fit a key during the priest’s absence, and was thus able to regale himself daily, until his miserly master discovered the shortage. This he attributed to rats, and as there were several holes in the box he carefully mended it with small pieces of wood; but still the bread disappeared, and as one of the neighbours had seen a snake in the priest’s domicile the padre concluded that this reptile was the cause of the depredations. To avoid discovery, Lazarillo slept with the key of the chest in his mouth, but one night his breathing caused a whistling sound upon the orifice of the implement, and the old priest, taking this for the hissing of the snake, delivered such a shrewd blow in the direction of the noise as to render the unfortunate Lazarillo an invalid for some considerable time. When he had recovered, the old priest took him by the hand and, leading him into the street, said to him: “Lazarillo my son, thou hast great natural gifts; thou art indeed far too clever for an old man like me, and I assure thee that I do not wish to see thee more. Farewell.”
Lazarillo, however, was not long in attaching himself to another master, who appeared to be a gentleman of birth and breeding. But now he found that he was in worse straits than ever, as though his master seemed a cavalier of family, he had not a penny in the world, and was entirely dependent for his daily bread upon what the boy could beg from charitably disposed persons. One day the landlord called for the rent, and the gentleman, assuring him that he would fetch it from his banker’s, sallied forth and never returned, so that once more the wretched urchin was without a master.
He next succeeded in obtaining the patronage of a pardoner who travelled from place to place selling indulgences and relics. On one occasion they stayed at an inn, where his master struck up a friendship with an alguazil, or constable. One night the pair sat late carousing, when a quarrel arose between them, and next day, as the pardoner was preaching in the church preparatory to selling his wares, the alguazil entered and denounced him as an impostor. The pardoner, with a great show of piety, prayed loudly that the heavenly powers would vindicate his character and would punish the alguazil, who immediately fell to the ground in the most dreadful convulsions. Some of the congregation prayed the pardoner that he would attempt some mitigation of the wrath of heaven upon his traducer, and the holy man stepped from the pulpit and laid a bull which he pretended he had received from the Pope upon the sufferer’s forehead. The man instantly rose as if cured, and the people, convinced that a miracle had occurred, at once bought up the pardoner’s entire stock. But the acute Lazarillo soon discovered that the pair had been in league with one another.
The last master to whose service Lazarillo attached himself was the Arch-priest of Salvador, in whose service he flourished exceedingly, and one of whose servants he married. But scandal crept into his household, and with the death of his wife he found himself as poor as ever.
Here the tale ends. It is impossible in such a brief sketch as this to do justice to the great degree of insight into the workings of the human heart which characterizes the authorship of this little novel, the first of its kind. Lazarillo de Tormes was the forerunner and exemplar of the entire school of the Picaresque novel, which at a later date became almost typical of Spanish fiction, and which gave rise to such masterpieces as Guzman de Alfarache, the Gil Blas of Le Sage, and the novels of Scarron, and the spirit of which to some extent was mirrored in our own Laurence Sterne; nor is its influence by any means defunct, as can readily be seen by reference to certain of the works of Mr Maurice Hewlett and Mr Jeffery Farnol.