“So I have, father, enough and enough, when I see you and mother going on so well. What can I want more?”
“Oh, my brave boy, we know you are a grateful, good son; but I have been your age myself; you have companions, you have little expenses of your own. Here; this vine, this fig-tree, and a melon a week next summer shall be yours. With these make a fine figure amongst the little Neapolitan merchants; and all I wish is that you may prosper as well, and by the same honest means, in managing for yourself, as you have done managing for me.”
“Thank you, father; and if I prosper at all, it shall be by those means, and no other, or I should not be worthy to be called your son.”
Piedro the cunning did not make quite so successful a summer’s work as did Francisco the honest. No extraordinary events happened, no singular instance of bad or good luck occurred; but he felt, as persons usually do, the natural consequences of his own actions. He pursued his scheme of imposing, as far as he could, upon every person he dealt with; and the consequence was, that at last nobody would deal with him.
“It is easy to outwit one person, but impossible to outwit all the world,” said a man [309] who knew the world at least as well as either Piedro or his father.
Piedro’s father, amongst others, had reason to complain. He saw his own customers fall off from him, and was told, whenever he went into the market, that his son was such a cheat there was no dealing with him. One day, when he was returning from the market in a very bad humour, in consequence of these reproaches, and of his not having found customers for his goods, he espied his smart son Piedro at a little merchant’s fruit-board devouring a fine gourd with prodigious greediness. “Where, glutton, do you find money to pay for these dainties?” exclaimed his father, coming close up to him, with angry gestures. Piedro’s mouth was much too full to make an immediate reply, nor did his father wait for any, but darting his hand into the youth’s pocket, pulled forth a handful of silver.
“The money, father,” said Piedro, “that I got for the fish yesterday, and that I meant to give you to-day, before you went out.”
“Then I’ll make you remember it against another time, sirrah!” said his father. “I’ll teach you to fill your stomach with my money. Am I to lose my customers by your tricks, and then find you here eating my all? You are a rogue, and everybody has found you out to be a rogue; and the worst of rogues I find you, who scruples not to cheat his own father.”
Saying these words, with great vehemence he seized hold of Piedro, and in the very midst of the little fruit-market gave him a severe beating. This beating did the boy no good; it was vengeance not punishment. Piedro saw that his father was in a passion, and knew that he was beaten because he was found out to be a rogue, rather than for being one. He recollected perfectly that his father once said to him: “Let everyone take care of his own grapes.”
Indeed it was scarcely reasonable to expect that a boy who had been educated to think that he might cheat every customer he could in the way of trade, should be afterwards scrupulously honest in his conduct towards the father whose proverbs encouraged his childhood in cunning.