“The note I have put upon her, I will take from her. Do you comprehend? And Lucas will be very careful not to set himself up to crow while I live. There cannot be two heads, and, ‘in sight of the public stocks, street-criers keep their mouths shut.’”
“Think, Juan, that your son should be the staff of your old age. You may provoke him so far that he will leave you some day without warning.”
“Let him go; I have the means to maintain myself, and my wife and daughter.”
“Ah! Juan, what have you left? Juice don’t run out of a sucked orange. As if that woman had not swallowed your slice of field and olive-yard, leaving you nothing but the house; and that will go the same way the field and orchard went. As for making a living—you have thrown yourself away; your back is getting stiff already, and ‘to old age comes no fairy godmother.’ Where, then, are those ‘means’ to come from? What you are going to do is get entangled in debts; and, let a man be as honest as he will, ‘if he owes and doesn’t pay, all his credit flies away.’”
“La Leona has a gossip at the port that is a contrabandist; he is going to take me for a partner.”
“Only this was wanting!” exclaimed the old man indignantly. “You! you take to the path![7] Does Barabbas tempt you, Juan Garcia? Have you lost your senses entirely, or are you fooling me? Sure enough,
‘he that goes with wolves will learn to howl.’ Don’t you know that the devil takes honest gains and dishonest, and the gainer with them? But let us keep to the matter in hand. Juan, the woman has a bad name that neither you nor the king, if he tried, could take from her. She is bad of herself; and neither you nor the bishop, if he set his heart on doing it, could make her good. Moreover, ‘a rotten apple spoils its company.’”
“Go on with the bad! ‘Against evil-speaking there’s nothing strong’; but, if she appears good to me, we are all paid.”
“Juan, ‘look before you leap.’ You have not the excuse of youth for your indiscretion; you are more than forty years old.”
“And have more than forty arrobas[8] of patience, Uncle Bartolo. Candela! I have long sought and never found a friend that would offer me a sixpence, and have found, without seeking, one that gives me advice.”