[Footnote 15: The Spaniards keep their accounts in piastres, reals, and marvedis, the first-named being worth about 8s. 6d. of our money. Thirty-four marvedis make a real, eight reals a piastre. The real mentioned in the text was probably a piece of eight or piastre.]
"Neighbor.—That's rather dear.
"Father.—Now isn't it, sir?
"Daughter.—My father only asks a real and a half.
"Neighbor.—Let us see a sample.
"Husband.—Ah, don't ask to talk about it farther. I have to-day put down a small plot of olives. My wife says that within seven or eight years we'll be able to gather four or five fanèques of fruit from them. She is to collect them, I to take them on the ass to market, and our daughter to sell them, and she must not take less than two reals. She says yes, I say no, and that's the whole of it.
"Neighbor.—A nice a fair, by my faith! The olives are hardly planted, and yet your daughter has been made to cry and roar about them.
"Daughter.—Very true indeed, sir, what you say.
"Father.—Don't cry any more, Menciguela. Neighbor, this little body is worth her weight in gold. Go, lay the table, child. You must have an apron out of the very first money I get for the olives.
"Neighbor.—Good-by, my friend; go in and be agreeable with your wife.
"Father.—Good-by, sir. (He and his daughter go in.)
"Neighbor, alone.—It must be owned that some things happen here below beyond belief. Ouf! quarrel about olives before they're in existence!"
The reader will easily recognize the "Maid with the milking pail" at the bottom of this illustration. Before the production of any of the regular pieces of De Vega, or Calderon, or Alarcon, or Tirso de Molina, the easily pleased folk of country or town were thoroughly satisfied with Rueda's repertory. When the talented stroller died in 1567, he was honored with a costly funeral, and solemnly interred in the cathedral of Cordova. Strange contrast between his posthumous fortune and that of Molière!
The impression made on Cervantes by the performances on Rueda's platform was strong and lasting. He ever retained a high respect for the talent of observation, the native genius and the good sense of Lope de Rueda.
In the preface to his own plays, Cervantes left an inventory of the theatrical properties of the strolling establishments in his youth:
"All the materials of representation were contained in a sack. They were made up of four jackets of sheepskin, laced with gilt leather, four beards, as many wigs, four shepherd's crooks. The comedies consisted of eclogues or colloquies between two or three shepherds and one shepherdess. They prolonged the entertainments by means of interludes, such as that of the Negress, the Ruffian, the Fool, or that of the Biscayan,—four personages played by Lope as well as many others, and all with the greatest perfection and the happiest natural ability that can be imagined."
One evening in the old age of Cervantes, the company around him were discussing the living actors and the present condition of the theatre. Among other things they treated of the infancy of the Spanish stage, and the artist who first essayed to make it something better than a platform for tumbling. Cervantes at once brought forward the claims of his early master:
"I remember having seen play the great comedian Lope de Rueda, a man distinguished for his intelligence and his style of acting. He excelled in pastoral poetry. In that department no one then or since has shown himself his superior. Though then a child, and unable to appreciate the merit of his verses, nevertheless when I occasionally repeat some couplets that have remained in my memory, I find that my impression of his ability is correct."
HIS FIRST STEP IN LIFE.