Colloquy of the Dogs - The Monday Morning Memo...Submission ID: 20 2 The captain ended his...

Submission ID: 20 1

ColloquyoftheDogs

THEDECEITFULMARRIAGE

A weak, ghostly soldier staggered out of the Hospital of the Resurrection at the edge of the town of Vallalodid, leaning heavily on his sword. Though the weather was mild in this Spanish province, he looked as though he had recently sweated off a third of his weight. An old lawyer friend, Peralta, who had not seen him for months, approached the invalid in shock.

“What on earth!” he cried. “Ensign Campuzano, is that you? I thought you were with our troops in Belgium, instead of hobbling along with your sword for a crutch. You look like hell!”

“Well, pretty clearly, I am here now,” replied Campuzano. “I have just come out of the Hospital of the Resurrection, where I have been dogged for many days by a dreadful sickness contracted from a woman I was indiscreet enough to make my wife.”

“You got married, then?” said Peralta. “I sure did.” “I’m guessing you got ‘married’ without benefit of clergy. That kind of union brings plenty

of reasons for regret.” “It may have been without benefit of clergy,” wheezed the Ensign, “but I definitely had the

benefit of medical care. The wench gave me a raging case of the French disease, and I have suffered through 40 ‘sweating’ treatments at the hospital to remedy it. As grim as that was, the damage she did to my soul is beyond remedy.” He paused. “I’m sorry, friend, but I find long conversations in the sun pretty draining. Perhaps another day I can regale you with my adventures – which I assure you are unlike anything you have ever heard.”

“Don’t be absurd,” said Peralta. “You must come to where I am staying and share some stew. It’s not much, but I can add to it a pie and a bit of ham – and a hearty welcome, not only now, but any time.”

Campuzano accepted his friend’s gracious invitation. Peralta took his friend home and fed him as hospitably as he had promised. After dinner, he asked him to relate his adventures.

Campuzano took a deep breath and dove in: “You remember how friendly I was here in town with Captain Herrera, who is now in

Belgium.” “I remember it well,” replied Peralta. “Well, one day when he and I had finished dinner in the inn where we lived, there came in

two fine gentlewomen with their servants. One of them chatted up the captain, leaning against a window. The other sat down beside me, with her veil lowered, so that I could barely see her face. I asked her to lift her veil, but the coquette refused – which, of course, made me want to see her even more. What piqued my interest even more was the delicate whiteness of her hand, which bore some handsome rings.

“At the time, I was dressed to impress, with that heavy chain you have seen me wear, my fancy hat with plumes and gold bands, and full military regalia. I kept begging her to unveil. ‘Don’t beg,’ she replied. ‘I have a house not far away. Have your servant follow me there so he can tell you where it is, and then come see me tomorrow. I am more virtuous than my reply suggests, yet if your discretion matches your fine appearance, I will let you see me unveiled.’ I kissed her hand for the favor she granted me, in return for which I promised mountains of gold.

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The captain ended his conversation, the ladies went away, and a servant of mine followed them. The captain told me that his lady had been asking him to take some letters to Belgium to another captain. She said it was her cousin, though he knew he was actually her beau.

“I was eager to touch the snow-white hands I had seen, and dying for a peep at the face. So, the next day, I knocked at the door that my servant pointed out to me, and was let in. I found myself in a handsomely furnished house and in the presence of a lady about 30 years old, whom I recognized by her hands. More pretty than beautiful, she was still fascinating. Her sweet voice was hypnotizing. I had long talks with her, in which I made a fool of myself: I bragged, swaggered, and strained to impress her. But she had heard this kind of sweet talk from men before, and she could tell I was rounding up a bit. During four days of visits, we never did more than talk – though I was certainly thinking of doing more.

“I saw no evidence of other suitors at her house. I decided to frame my suit as a soldier about to decamp, and I came to the point with my fair one, Stephanie (for that is her name). She replied:

“‘Ensign Campuzano, I won’t try to pass myself off on you as a saint. I have been – and still am – a sinner, but not flagrant enough to cause public disgrace. I have no inherited fortune, but the furniture of my house is worth a good 2,500 ducats, and would fetch that sum at auction. With this property as a dowry, I seek a husband to whom I may devote myself obediently, and with whom I may lead a better life, while devoting myself to delighting and serving him. No chef can boast of a more refined palate or can turn out more exquisite food than I can. I can run a household, be the tidy wench in the kitchen, and be the lady in the drawing room. In short, I know both how to command and how to make myself obeyed.

‘I’m very tight with a ducat. My servants and I stitched my excellent stock of household linens by hand. I know I am being immodest, but I see no need to be coy with you at this point. I want a husband to protect me, command me, and honor me, and not a shallow flatterer to abuse me. If you will accept the gift I offer you, here I am, ready and willing to put myself wholly at your disposal.’

“Well, I wasn’t thinking with my head at that moment, to say the least. Delighted beyond words, and seeing such a quantity of valuable property (which I had already auctioned off in my head), I told her without more thought that I was blessed above all men. I told her that finding her was a miracle, and I was eager to make her the lady of my affections and my fortune.

“I described my own ‘fortune’ – and this is important – as including that heavy chain that I wore around my neck, other jewels I had at home, and some military finery, together worth more than 2,000 ducats. Combined with her 2,500 ducats, we could move to my home town, where I had relatives and some inherited property. Its yearly increase, helped by our money, would allow us to live comfortably and cheerfully.

“We agreed at once to marry. The notices were published promptly, and four days later, the marriage was celebrated in the presence of two friends of mine and a youth who she said was her cousin, and to whom I introduced myself graciously as a relation.

“My servant moved my trunk from my lodgings to my wife’s house. I removed my magnificent chain in my wife’s presence and showed her a few others (smaller but of better workmanship), and some other trinkets. I laid out my best regalia and my plumes, and gave her some cash I had on hand to defray the household expenses. For six days I tasted the sweetness of wedlock, enjoying myself like a poor bridegroom in the house of a rich father-in-law. I walked on rich carpets, lay on smooth linen sheets, lit my way with silver candlesticks, breakfasted in bed, rose at eleven o’clock, dined at twelve, and took my siesta at two. My Stephanie and the

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servant girl tended to my every need. If Stephanie left my side, it was to go to the kitchen to prepare delicacies to please me.

“Those days flew by, and, seeing myself so well treated, I considered abandoning the evil intent I had begun this affair with. But the beginning of the end came all too soon: One morning, while I was still in bed with Stephanie, there was a loud knocking and calling at the front door. The servant put her head out of the window, and immediately popped it in again, saying, ‘There she is, sure enough! She has come sooner than she said she would in her letter the other day!’

“‘Who’s here, girl?’ I asked. “‘Who?’ she replied. ‘Why, Madame Clementa Bueso, and with her Sir Almendarez, with

two other servants, and Hortense, the housekeeper she took with her.” “‘Bless me! Run, wench, and open the door for them,’ Stephanie exclaimed. ‘And you, sir, if

you love me, don’t put yourself out, or reply for me to anything you may hear said against me.’ “‘Why, who is to say anything to offend you, especially in front of me? Tell me, who are

these people, whose arrival appears to have upset you so?’ “‘I have no time to answer,’ said Stephanie. ‘Just be assured that whatever takes place here

will be all pretense, and relates to a certain scheme that you will know soon.’ “Before I could reply, in walked Madame Bueso, dressed in lustrous green satin, richly laced

with gold, a hat resplendent with feathers, a gold hatband, and a fine veil covering half her face. With her entered Sir Almendarez, also richly dressed. The housekeeper Hortense was the first to speak, exclaiming, ‘Saints preserve us, what is this? My lady Clementa’s bed occupied, and by a man too! It appears that Stephanie has availed herself of my lady’s friendliness to some purpose!’

“‘She certainly has, Hortense,’ replied Clementa, ‘but I blame myself for not being on my guard against friends who can be friends only when it helps them.’

“Stephanie replied, ‘Please don’t be angry, Clementa. I assure you there is a mystery under what you see, and when you understand it, you will not blame me.’

“Meanwhile, I had got half dressed, and Stephanie led me by the hand into another room. There she told me that this friend of hers wanted to play a trick on the man who had come with her, to whom she expected to be married. The trick was to make him believe that the house and everything in it belonged to her. Once married, it would matter little when the truth was discovered, so confident was the lady in the great love of her intended. The property would then be returned – and who could blame her, or any woman, for contriving to get an honorable husband though it were by a little trickery?

“I replied that it was a tremendous stretch of friendship she thought of making, and that she ought to consider carefully, for she was likely to have to go to court to get her things back. But she gave me so many reasons, and alleged so many favors by which she was bound to serve Clementa, that against my will, and with serious misgivings, I complied with Stephanie’s wishes. She assured me that the scheme would not last more than eight days, during which we were to stay with another friend of hers.

“We finished dressing. She went to take her leave of Madame Bueso and Sir Almendarez, ordered my servant to follow her with my luggage, and I too followed without taking leave of anyone. Stephanie stopped at a friend’s house, and stayed talking with her a good while, leaving us in the street, till at last a girl came out and told my servant and me to come in. We went upstairs to a small room with two beds so close together that they seemed just one, as the bedclothes actually touched each other. We stayed six days, quarreling constantly, for I was always telling her what a stupid thing she had done in giving up custody of her house and goods.

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“One day, when Stephanie had gone out, as she said, to see how her business was going on, the woman of the house asked me what was the reason of my fighting so much with my wife, and what she had done to deserve so much scolding. I told her the whole story, how I had married Stephanie, the dower she had brought me, and how foolish she was for leaving her house and goods to Clementa, even though it was to catch such an eligible husband.

“The woman immediately began to cross and bless herself rapidly, and to cry out, ‘Oh, Lord! Oh, the wench!’ making me highly distressed. At last, ‘Ensign,’ she said, ‘I don’t know whether telling you or not telling you will weigh more on my conscience. But here goes, come what may: The truth is that Madame Clementa Bueso is the real owner of the house and property that you have had palmed off on you for a dower. The lies are just what Stephanie has told you, but in reverse: It is Stephanie who has neither house nor goods, nor any clothes besides those on her back. What gave her an opportunity for this trick was that Clementa went to take a short pilgrimage to the church of our Lady of Guadalupe, leaving Stephanie to look after her house, for in fact they are great friends. And after all, when you think of it, Stephanie is not to blame, since she has had the wit to get herself such a man as you for a husband.’

“Here she stopped, leaving me in despair. Immediately, I grabbed my cloak and sword and went searching for Stephanie, resolved to punish her soundly. But chance intervened – whether good luck or not I can’t tell – as she was nowhere to be found. I later went with a heavy heart to Madame Clementa’s, and found her as much at ease as a lady should be in her own house. Not daring to say a word to her, because her man was present, I returned to my landlady. She told me that she had informed Stephanie that I now knew her whole deception, that she had asked how I had seemed to take the news, that she (the landlady) said I had taken it badly and had gone out to look for her, apparently with the worst intentions. Hearing that, Stephanie had gone away, taking with her all that was in my trunk, leaving me only one traveling coat. I ran to my trunk, and found it open like a coffin waiting for a dead body – and it may as well have been my own if I had enough sense to comprehend the great scope of my misfortune.”

“Great it was, indeed,” observed his friend Peralta. “To think that Stephanie carried off your fine chain and gold hatband! Well, it is a true saying, ‘Misfortunes never come singly.’”

“Actually, I don’t so much mind that loss,” replied the ensign, “since in my case another old saying applies: ‘My father-in-law thought to cheat me by giving me his nearsighted daughter, but I am short one eye.’”

“How you can say that?” asked Peralta. “That doesn’t make sense.” “Well … I’d say all my chains and trinkets might be worth at most some five or six ducats.” “Impossible!” exclaimed his friend, “for the one I saw you wear must have weighed more

than 200 ducats.” “And it would have,” replied the ensign, “if it were real. But, as they say, ‘All that glitters is

not gold,’ and my fine things were only imitations – but so well made that nothing short of melting them down could have shown that they were not genuine.”

“So, then, it seems that you and the lovely Stephanie have played to a draw,” said his friend. “So much so that we may shuffle the cards and make a fresh deal. Except that she can get rid

of my fake chains, but I can’t get rid of the cheat she put upon me – for, at the end of the day, she remains my wife.”

“You may thank God, Campuzano,” said Peralta, “that your wife is on the run, and that you are not obliged to search for her.”

“True enough, but even without looking for her, I always see her in my mind. And wherever I am, my disgrace is always before me.”

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“I don’t know what to tell you, friend, except to quote Petrarch: ‘He who sets out to trick others has no right to complain when he is himself tricked.’”

“I’m not really complaining,” replied the Ensign, “but I do pity myself, for the culprit who knows his fault still feels the pain of his punishment. I am well aware that I sought to deceive and that I was deceived, and I got caught in my own snare, but I still feel sorry for myself. I soon learned that Stephanie ran off with that ‘cousin’ she brought to our wedding, who had been her lover for a long time. I had no desire to go after her and bring back upon myself an evil I was well rid of.

“I changed my lodgings – and my skin too, within a few days. It turns out I had contracted the dreaded ‘French disease’ from my wife, who was obviously no blushing virgin. My eyebrows and eyelashes began to fall out, then my hair. I was bald before my time, and stripped of everything, for I had neither a beard to comb nor money to spend. At last, I entered the Hospital of the Resurrection down the way. There, I took 40 ‘sweat’ treatments, which seem to have purged the disease. They say that I will get well if I take care of myself. I still have my sword. For the rest, I trust in God.

Peralta renewed his friendly offers of hospitality, quite puzzled at what he had heard.

CAMPUZANOTURNSFROMTHESTORYOFHISRECENTMARRIAGETOTHESTORYOFTHEDOGS

“If you are surprised at what I have told you so far, dear Peralta,” said the Ensign, “what will you say to the other things I have yet to tell you, which defy belief, since they violate all natural bounds? In some mysterious way, I think it was my prior disasters that brought me to that hospital, where I saw and heard what I will now relate to you. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to believe it. No one could.

The ensign’s lengthy windup before the pitch so piqued Peralta’s curiosity that he was eager to hear the rest of the story in detail.

“You have no doubt seen, said the Ensign, two dogs that go out with the monks at night with lanterns when they are collecting alms?”

“I have,” replied Peralta. “You may also have also seen, or heard, that if alms are thrown from the windows, and fall

on the ground, the dogs immediately help with the light and hunt for what has fallen; that they stop on their own in front of the windows from which they know they have received alms before; and that with all their tameness on these occasions, so that they are more like lambs than dogs, they are lions in the hospital, keeping guard with great vigilance.”

“I have heard all that,” said Peralta. “But none of that is particularly wonderful.” “But what I will now tell you of them,” returned the Ensign, “will amaze you. Yet, strange

as it is, you must believe it: Two nights before I left the hospital, I heard, and all but saw with my eyes, those two dogs, one of which is called ‘Scipio,’ the other ‘Berganza,’ stretched out on an old mat outside my room. In the middle of the night, lying awake in the dark, ruminating on my past adventures and my current sorrows, I heard talking, and set myself to listen attentively, to see whether I could make out who was speaking and what they said. Bit by bit I did both, and determined that the speakers were in fact the dogs Scipio and Berganza.”

The words were hardly out of Campuzano’s mouth when his friend jumped up and said: “Begging your pardon, Campuzano, till this moment I was in much doubt whether or not to believe what you have told me about your disastrous marriage. But what you now tell me of your

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having heard dogs talk makes me decide not to believe you at all. For God’s sake, don’t tell such nonsense to anybody, unless you are talking to someone who is as much your friend as I am.”

“I am not so ignorant,” replied Campuzano, “as not to know that animals can’t talk unless by a miracle. If parrots talk, it is only words that they have learned by rote, and because they have tongues adapted to pronounce them. Even so, they can’t speak and reply intelligently as those dogs did. Many times, indeed, since I heard them I have been inclined not to believe myself, but to regard as a dream that which, being really awake, with my own ears I heard, noted, and finally wrote down word for word. They discussed serious matters, such as might have been discussed by learned men rather than by dogs. So, since I could not have made their dialog up out of my own head, I have come, despite myself, to believe that I did not dream, and that the dogs did talk.”

“Zounds!” exclaimed Peralta, “have the times of Æsop come again, when the rooster talked with the fox, and one animal with another?”

“I would be excited,” replied the Ensign, “if I believed that time had returned. While I doubt that, I am ready to swear to by any oath you choose that I heard what I heard. I may have deceived myself, and this in reality may have been only a dream or some feverish syphilitic hallucination. But won’t it amuse you, Peralta, to see, written in the form of a dialog, what those dogs discussed?”

“Since I don’t have to believe that you heard dogs talk,” replied Peralta, “I will listen to this ‘dialog’ with pleasure, since it comes from a gentleman with talents such as yours.”

“Keep in mind that I was very attentive, my interest was piqued, and I have an unusually retentive memory. I got it all by heart, and wrote it down, word for word, the next day, without trying to color or adorn it, or adding or deleting anything to make it attractive. The conversation took place on two consecutive nights, though I have written down only the first night’s dialog, which contains the life of Berganza. They discussed the other dog Scipio’s life the second night. I intend to write that out too if I find that the first one is believed, or at least not disparaged. I have framed it as a dialog to avoid repeating phrases like, said Scipio, and replied Berganza.”

Campuzano took a roll of paper out of his breast pocket and handed it to his friend, who received it with a smile, as if he made very light of all he had heard, and was about to read.

“I will rest on this sofa,” said the Ensign, “while you are reading those dreams – or ravings. Feel free to put them down when you grow tired of them.”

“Make yourself comfortable,” said Peralta, “and I will soon complete my reading.” The Ensign lay down. His friend opened the lengthy scroll, and found it headed as follows:

DIALOGBETWEENSCIPIOANDBERGANZA

DOGSOFTHEHOSPITALOFTHERESURRECTIONCALLEDTHE“DOGSOFFRIARMAHUDES”

Scip. Berganza, let’s leave our watch over the hospital tonight and rest in this quiet place, where, unnoticed, we can enjoy what heaven has bestowed on us both at the same moment.

Berg. Scipio, I hear you speak, and know that I am speaking to you – yet can’t I believe it, because it is so, well, unnatural.

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Scip. True enough, Berganza, and what’s more miraculous is that we not only speak but do so intelligently, as though we could reason. Reason is what is supposed to separate humans from beasts.

Berg. I hear what you are saying, Scipio – but I’m still amazed that you are talking and I understand your words. Humans often comment on our gifts and instincts, and some say that our understanding of humans comes close to demonstrating reason.

Scip. Humans do praise our strong memory, our gratitude, and great fidelity. You may have seen some mausoleum sculptures with a dog between a husband and wife. That’s supposed to emphasize the couple’s affection and fidelity.

Berg. I have heard of loyal dogs who have cast themselves into the grave with their deceased masters, and of others who stood guard over their masters’ graves until they themselves died. Dogs rank just below elephants (and ahead of horses and apes) in our apparent understanding.

Scip. True, but have you ever heard of any elephant, dog, horse, or ape talking? Me either. Be that as it may, let us talk, for what heaven has ordained to happen, no human diligence or wit can prevent. We don’t need to understand how or why we are able to talk right now. Better to make the best of this opportunity, and since we are comfortable here, and don’t know how long we will be able to verbalize, let’s take advantage of it and talk all night. It would be a pity to sleep when we have so much to say. I have always longed to speak.

Berg. Me, too. Ever since I was strong enough to gnaw a bone I have longed to be able to speak. I have so much in my memory that I’m sure I have forgotten some things. But now that I am unexpectedly able to talk, I intend to enjoy it and talk as much as I can about everything I can recollect, even if it comes out confusedly and helter-skelter. For I don’t know when this blessing will be reclaimed. It may be a loan rather than a gift.

Scip. Let us proceed like this, Berganza: Tonight you will tell me the story of your life. And tomorrow night, if we still can still talk, I will tell you my story. It will be better to spend the time in narrating our own lives than in trying to know those of others.

Berg. I have always seen you as a discreet dog and a friend, and now I do so more than ever, since you want to tell me your adventures and know mine. But first, let’s see whether anyone can overhear us.

Scip. No one, I don’t think. The only patient nearby is a soldier going through some sweating treatments. At this time of night, he is more likely to be asleep than to listen to anything.

Berg. Since then we can speak securely, listen. And if I tire you with what I say, just tell me to be quiet.

Scip. Talk till dawn, or till we are heard, and I will listen to you with pleasure, without interrupting you – unless I need to.

BERGANZA’S BEGINS HIS LIFE WITH NICHOLAS THE PUG-NOSED BUTCHER Berg. I first saw the sun in Seville, in its slaughterhouses, which were outside one of the

gates to the city, the Puerta de la Carne. I’m guessing my forebears were some of the mastiffs bred by the butchers there. My first master was “Nicholas the Pug-Nosed,” a stout, thickset, passionate fellow, like all butchers. Nicholas taught the other whelps and me to run after bulls along with older dogs and catch them by the ears. I became very good at it.

Scip. It’s no wonder, Berganza, that ill-doing is so easily learned. It seems immoral conduct is easier to learn than moral conduct.

Berg. It’s hard to describe what I saw in those slaughterhouses, and the dreadful things done there. No one who works in them, whatever his rank, has any conscience or humanity, and they

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fear neither the king nor his justice. Few ever marry, and they are quite like carrion birds of prey, maintaining themselves and their women by what they steal. On all meat-selling days, masses of servants from town assemble in the slaughtering place before dawn to fill their bags with meat for their masters.

Not a beast is killed out of which these people don’t take “tithes” – usually the choicest and most savory bits. The masters know they do so, but hope that they use their knives for themselves sparingly. But the worst thing of all was that these butchers think no more of killing a man than they do a cow. They will quarrel over nothing, and stick a knife into a person as readily as they would fell an ox. It is a rare thing for a day to pass without brawls and bloodshed, and even murder. They all have their guardian angel in Seville’s main square, the Plaza de San Francesco, whom they give offerings of sirloins and beef tongues.

Scip. Berganza, if you go into such detail on the characteristics and faults of all the masters you have had, we need to pray to be granted the gift of speech for a year. Even then, at the rate you are going, I’m afraid you won’t get through half your story. Some stories are pleasing in themselves, and others please the listener by how they are told. Some satisfy even if they are told plainly, while others must be set off by expressive play of features, hands, and voice to engage the listener. Please take my hint.

Berg. Noted. I will do my best, but I am so excited at being able to speak that I am having trouble and being brief.

Scip. Be wary with your tongue, for from that muscle flow the greatest ills of human life. Berg. Well, anyway, my master taught me to carry a basket in my mouth, and to protect it

against anyone who might try to take it from me. He also taught me where his mistress lived, sparing her servant from coming to the slaughterhouse, for I used to carry to her the pieces of meat he had stolen overnight. Once as I was on this errand in the early morning, I heard someone calling me by name from a window. Looking up, I saw a lovely girl. She came down to the street door and began to call me again. I went up to her to see what she wanted of me – and what was it but to take the meat from my basket and put an old clog in its place? “Be off with you,” she said, “and tell Nicholas the Pug-Nosed, your master, not to trust in brutes.” I could easily have made her give up what she had taken from me, but I did not want to damage her delicate white hands.

Scip. You did quite right, for beauty is always to be held in respect. Berg. Well, I went back to my master without the meat and with the old clog. He thought

that I had come back very soon, and, seeing the clog, he guessed the trick, snatched up a knife, and flung it at me. Had I not leaped aside, you would not now be hearing my story. I was off like a shot behind St. Bernard’s, away over the fields, without stopping to think where my luck would lead me.

BERGANZA’STIMEWITHSHEPHERDS

Berg. That night, I slept under the open sky, and the following day I chanced to fall in with a flock of sheep. The moment I saw it, I felt that I had found the very thing that suited me, since it appeared to me to be the natural and proper duty of dogs to guard the fold, defending the lowly and the weak against the proud and mighty. One of the three shepherds who were with the flock immediately called me to him, and I, who desired nothing better, went up at once to him, lowering my head and wagging my tail. He passed his hand along my back, opened my mouth, examined my teeth, guessed my age, and told his master that I looked like a dog of good breeding. Just then, up came the owner of the flock on a gray mare with a lance, so that he looked more a soldier than a sheep master.

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“What dog is that?” he asked the shepherd. “He seems a good one.” “Well said,” replied the man. “For I have examined him closely, and he is well-bred. He came here just now. I don’t know whose he is, but I know that he does not belong to any of the flocks hereabouts.”

“In that case,” said the master, “put the collar on him that belonged to the dog that died, give him the same rations as the rest, and treat him kindly that he may take a liking to the fold and guard it.” So saying, he went away, and the shepherd put on my neck a collar set with steel points, after first giving me a great mess of bread sopped in milk in a trough. They named me “Barcino.”

I liked my second master and my new duty very well. I watched the flock diligently, pausing only in the afternoons, when I went to rest in the shade or near one of the many streams that watered the country. I did not spend those leisure hours idly, but used them to reminisce, especially about the life I had led in the slaughterhouse, and also about my prior master and his fellows – and their mistresses. I could tell you many things I learned in the school of that she-butcher, my master’s lady, but I must skip them, or you will think I’m tedious.

Scip. I have heard that it was a saying of a great poet among the ancients, that it was a difficult thing to write satires. I consent that you put some point into your remarks, but not to the drawing of blood. You may hit lightly, but not wound or kill. For sarcasm, though it makes many laugh, is not good if it mortally wounds one. And if you can please without it, I will think you more discreet.

Berg. I will take your advice, and can’t wait until you relate your own adventures. Seeing how judiciously you correct the faults in my narrative, I expect that your own will be delivered in a manner equally instructive and delightful.

But to take up the broken thread of my story, I say that in those hours of silence and solitude, it occurred to me among other things, that there could be no truth in what I had heard tell of the life of shepherds – of those, at least, about whom my master’s lady used to read, when I went to her house. Those stories gave a quaint, pastoral view of how they passed their lives in singing and playing on pipes and lutes and other old-fashioned instruments. Those books made the shepherds out to be full of simple nobility.

But my masters, and the rest of the shepherds in that part of the country, were very different from the shepherds in the books. If mine sang, it was no tuneful and finely composed strains, but rude and vulgar songs, accompanied not by pipes and lutes but by one crook knocked against another, or by bits of tile jingled between the fingers. And they sang with voices not melodious and tender, but so coarse and out of tune that whether singly or together, they seemed to be howling or grunting. They spent most of the day hunting up their fleas or mending their shoes. I concluded that those books about pastoral life are clearly only fictions written to amuse the idle. Otherwise, my shepherds would have shown some trace of that happy life of yore, with its pleasant meads, spacious groves, sacred mountains, handsome gardens, clear streams, crystal fountains, and decorous love songs, with the air filled with flutes and pipes and ocarinas.

Scip. Enough, Berganza! Get back onto your road, and trot on. Berg. Much obliged, Scipio. But for your hint, I was getting so warm upon the scent, that I

would have recited one of those fictional books. But maybe some other time I will give you the details. Have patience and listen to my adventures in the order they occurred.

Scip. Very well – tell me what you will and how you will, but be brief! Berg. I say, then, that I was pleased with my duty as a guardian of the flock. I felt useful,

and avoided sloth, the root and mother of all vices. For if I rested by day, I never slept at night, as wolves continually assailed us. The instant the shepherds said to me, “The wolf! The wolf! At

Submission ID: 20 10

him, Barcino,” I dashed forward before all the other dogs, in the direction the shepherds pointed out to me. I scoured the valleys, searched the mountains, beat the thickets, leaped the gullies, crossed the roads, and on the morning returned to the fold without having caught the wolf or seen a glimpse of him, panting, weary, all scratched and torn, and my feet cut with splinters. Invariably, I found in the fold either a ewe or a wether slaughtered and half eaten by the wolf. It vexed me desperately to see how little good my care and diligence were. Then the owner of the flock would come, the shepherds would go out to meet him with the skin of the slaughtered animal, the owner would scold the shepherds for their negligence, and order the dogs to be punished for cowardice.

We would be showered with sticks and curses. So, finding myself punished without fault, and that my care, alertness, and courage never kept the wolf away, I decided to change my ways. I chose not to go out to seek him, as I had been used to do, but to remain close to the fold – for since the wolf came to it, that would be the surest place to catch him. Every week we had an alarm, and one dark night I managed to get a sight of the wolves, from which it was so impossible to guard the fold. I crouched behind a bank. The rest of the dogs ran forward. Then, from my hiding place, I saw and heard two shepherds pick out one of the fattest sheep and slaughter it so that it really appeared next morning as if a wolf had killed it. I was horrified when I saw that the shepherds themselves were the wolves, and that the flock was plundered by the very men who had the keeping of it.

As usual, they made known to their master the mischief done by the wolf, gave him the skin and part of the carcass, and ate the rest – the choicest part – themselves. As usual, they got a scolding, and we dogs got a beating. Thus, there were no wolves, yet the flock dwindled away, and I was unable to speak, all which filled me with anguish. “O Lord!” said I to myself. “Who can ever remedy this villainy? Who can make known that the defense is offensive, the sentinels sleep, the trustees rob, and those who guard you kill you?”

Scip. You say very true, Berganza, for there is no worse or more subtle thief than the domestic thief. Accordingly, more people die trusting than those who are wary. Sadly, it is impossible for people to get on in the world in any tolerable way without mutual confidence. But let us drop this subject, as there is no one to hear this preaching. Go on.

Berg. I decided then to quit my service as a shepherd dog, though it seemed so good a one, and to choose another in which well-doing was at least not punished. I returned to Seville, and entered the service of a wealthy merchant.

Scip. How did you go about getting yourself a master? As things are nowadays, an honest man has great difficulty in finding an employer. Very different are the lords of the earth from the Lord of Heaven: The former, before they will accept a servant, first scrutinize his birth and parentage, examine his qualifications, and even require to know what clothes he has. But for entering God’s service, the poorest is the richest, the humblest is the best born. And whoever is disposed to serve Him with a pure heart is at once entered in his book of wages, and has such assigned to him as his utmost desire can hardly compass, so ample are they.

Berg. Now it is you who is preaching, Scipio. Scip. Well, it strikes me that it is. So go on. Berg. As to how I set about getting a master: Humility is the foundation of all virtues. It

smooths inconveniences, overcomes difficulties, and always conducts us to glorious ends. It makes friends of enemies, calms the short-tempered, and softens the arrogant. It is the mother of modesty and the sister of temperance. I used humility whenever I wanted to get a place in any house, after having first determining that it could maintain a great dog. I then placed myself near


the door. Whenever anyone entered whom I guessed to be a stranger, I barked at him, but when the master entered, I went up to him with my head down and my tail wagging, and licked his shoes. If they drove me out with sticks, I took it patiently, and returned with the same gentleness to fawn on the person who beat me. The rest let me alone, seeing my perseverance and my generous behavior. After one or two rounds of this, I got a footing in the house. I was a good servant, so they took a liking to me immediately. And I was never turned out, but dismissed myself – or, more accurately, I ran away. Sometimes I met with such a kind master that I would still be with him except for bad fortune.

Scip. I did the same thing to get into the houses of the masters I served. It seems that we read men’s thoughts.

BERGANZA’STIMEWITHAWEALTHYMERCHANT

Berg. Here’s what happened after I left those criminal shepherds: I returned to Seville, a city that provides refuge for the poor and the destitute. I planted myself at the door of a large house belonging to a merchant, exerted myself as usual, and soon gained admission. They kept me tied up behind the door by day and let me loose at night. I did my duty diligently, barked at strangers, and growled at those not well known. I did not sleep at night, but visited the yards, and walked about the terraces, acting as general guard over our own house and those of the neighbors. My master was so pleased with my service that he gave orders I should be well treated, and have a ration of bread, with the bones from his table, and the kitchen scraps.

For this, I showed my gratitude leaping incessantly when I saw my master, especially when he came home after being abroad. I was so exuberant with joy that my master ordered me to be untied, and left loose day and night. As soon as I was set free, I ran to him, and gamboled all round him, without trying to lay my paws on him. I was careful because I remembered that ass in Æsop’s Fables, who was ass enough to think of fondling his master in the same manner as his favorite lapdog, and was well beaten for his pains. I understood that fable to mean that what is graceful and comely in some is not so in others. Let the ribald flout and jeer, the charlatan tumble – let the common fellow imitate the song of birds and the gestures of animals, but not the man of quality, who can earn no credit or renown from any skill in these things.

Scip. Enough already, Berganza – I understand you. Go on. Berg. Would that others understood me as well! For I am shocked when I see a cavalier

make a buffoon of himself, and taking pride in being able to play at a shell game, or in dancing the sensual chacona to perfection.

Well, anyway, this merchant I have been telling you of had two sons, aged 12 and 14, who were studying the humanities with the Jesuits. They went in great pomp to the school, accompanied both by their tutor and by pages to carry their books and what they called their handbook. To see them go with such pageantry, on horseback in fine weather, and in a carriage when it rained, made me wonder at the plain manner in which their father went abroad upon his business, attended only by a solitary servant, and sometimes mounted upon a sorry-looking mule.

Scip. Merchants customarily display their wealth and importance not in their own persons, but in those of their sons. For merchants are greater in their shadows than in themselves. And because they rarely think of anything else than their bargains, they spend little on themselves. But ambition and wealth burn to display themselves, so they show their own in the persons of their sons, maintaining them as if they were sons of princes. Sometimes they purchase titles for them, and set upon their breasts a coat of arms to distinguish them from commoners.


Berg. It may be ambition, but a generous ambition that seeks to improve one’s condition without harming others.

Scip. Ambition almost always injures others. Berg. Didn’t we agree not to speak evil of anyone? Scip. Yes, but I’m not speaking evil of anyone. Berg. You now convince me of the truth of what I have often heard, that a sharp-tongued

person will utter enough to blast 10 families, and slander 20 good men. If he is taken to task for it, he will reply innocently that he said nothing – or if he did, he meant nothing by it, and would not have said it if he had thought anyone would take it amiss. In truth, Scipio, one needs much wisdom and care to be able to converse for two hours without speaking ill of someone.

In my own case, for instance, brute as I am, I see that with every fourth phrase I speak, malicious words come to my tongue like flies to wine. Doing and speaking evil are part of original sin, and we suck it in with our mother’s milk. Hardly is a boy out of swaddling clothes before he lifts his hand to strike others, and the first words he speaks are to call his nurse or his mother names.

Scip. That is true. I confess my error, and ask you to forgive it, as I have forgiven you so many. Let us backbite no more. Go on with your story. You were talking of the grand style in which the sons of your master the merchant went to the Jesuit school.

Berg. I will continue then. To inspire myself to abstain from ill-natured remarks, I propose a remedy that a great swearer used: Repenting of his bad habit, he made it a practice to pinch his arm, or kiss the ground as penance, whenever an oath escaped him – yet he continued to swear even so. Similarly, whenever I speak ill of someone, even though I intend not to do so, I will bite the tip of my tongue, so that the pain will remind me of my fault, and keep me from relapsing.

Scip. If that’s the remedy you propose, I expect that you will have to bite your tongue so often that there will be none of it left, so you indeed won’t be able to offend any more.

Berg. Well, to resume: one day my master’s sons left a notebook in the courtyard where I was. As I had been taught to fetch and carry, I took it up, and went after them, resolved to put it into their own hands. It turned out exactly as I had hoped, for my masters seeing me coming with the notebook in my mouth, which I held cleverly by its string, sent a servant to take it from me. But I would not let him, nor would I release the notebook until I entered the hall with it, at which all the students started laughing. Going up to the elder of my young masters, I put it into his hands, as obsequiously as I could, and went and sat on my haunches at the door of the hall, with my eyes fixed on the master who was lecturing in the chair.

Virtue always fascinates me. For, though I know little about it, I took delight in seeing the loving care with which the friars taught those youths, shaping their tender minds, and guiding them in the path of virtue, which they demonstrated to them along with their subjects. I observed how they reproved them deftly, chastised them with mercy, animated them with examples, incited them with rewards, and indulged them with prudence. They set before them the loathsomeness of vice and the beauty of virtue, so that they might achieve the end for which they were created.

Scip. You say very well, Berganza. For I have heard tell of Jesuits that none equal them for worldly wisdom and that few can match them as guides on the road to heaven. They are mirrors of integrity, catholic in doctrine, rare in wisdom, and profound in humility, bringing blessings to all.

Berg. True enough. But back to my story: My masters were so pleased with my carrying them the notebook that they wanted me to do so daily. So I enjoyed the life of a king, or even


better, having nothing to do but to play with the students. With them, I was so gentle that they could put their hands in my mouth, and the smallest of them could ride on my back. They would fling their hats or caps for me to fetch, and I would put them into their hands with marks of great delight. They used to give me as much to eat as they could, and they were fond of seeing how I could crack nuts like a monkey, drop the shells, and eat the kernels. It was the winter season, when bread-and-butter sandwiches are common in Seville, and I was well supplied with them.

In short, I spent a student’s life, without hunger or itch, and that is saying everything for it. But this happy life ended too soon for me. It appeared to the professors that the students spent the half hour between the classes not in studying their lessons, but in playing with me, so they ordered my masters not to bring me to school any more.

I was left at home, at my old post behind the door. And notwithstanding my master’s gracious order that I should be at liberty day and night, I was again confined to a small mat, with a chain round my neck. Ah, Scipio, how sore a thing it is to pass from a state of happiness to one of wretchedness! They say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but passing unexpectedly from a miserable lot in life to an enjoyable one, and then to relapse soon into the former woeful state – that is such a poignant affliction, that is a prolonged torment.

Well, I returned to my ordinary rations, and to the bones flung to me by a female servant – but even these were partly filched from me by two cats, who quickly snapped up whatever fell beyond the range of my chain.

Brother Scipio, do allow me to philosophize a bit, for unless I reflect out loud on what has occurred to my mind, I feel that my story will be incomplete.

Scip. Beware, Berganza, that your tendency to philosophize does not tempt you to slander. For slander has no better cloak to conceal its malice than the pretense that all it utters are maxims of philosophers, that evil speaking is moral reproof, and that exposing the faults of others is nothing but honest zeal. There is no sarcastic person whose life, if you scrutinize it closely, will not be found full of vices and improprieties. And now that I have warned you, philosophize as much as you want.

TANGENTONPEDANTSSPEAKINGLATIN

Berg. At ease, Scipio. What I have to say is that, as I was the whole day at leisure – and leisure is the mother of reflection – I ruminated over several of Latin phrases I had heard when I was with my masters at school, and with which I had somewhat improved my mind. I determined to make use of these Latin phrases when I could, as if I knew how to talk – but not like some ignorant people who sprinkle their talk with Latin aphorisms, pretending that they know Latin when they can hardly decline a noun or conjugate a verb.

Scip. What’s worse is that some who really know Latin misuse it. They pour it out like water when talking to a shoemaker or a tailor.

Berg. On the whole, both those who speak Latin in front of persons who don’t understand it and those who use it though being ignorant of it are equally to blame.

Scip. Another thing: Some who know Latin can be asses nonetheless. Berg. No doubt. Even when in Roman times everybody spoke Latin as the mother tongue,

some among them were still fools. Scip. But knowing when to not speak the mother tongue and speak in Latin takes discretion,

Berganza.


Berg. True, for foolish words may be spoken in any language. And I have seen silly literati, tedious pedants, and babblers in the vernacular who were enough to plague one to death with their scraps of Latin.

Scip. Enough of this. Pray, proceed to your philosophical remarks. Berg. I made them already. Scip. How so? Berg. In those remarks on Latin and the mother tongue, which I began and you finished. Scip. Railing is not philosophizing, Berganza. In God’s name, hold your peace, and go on

with your story. Berg. How can I go on with my story, if I hold my peace? Scip. I mean to go on with it in one piece, and don’t follow every tangent.

BERGANZARETURNSTOHISTIMEWITHTHEMERCHANT

Berg. Back to my story: My evil fortune, not content with tearing me from my “studies” and from the calm and happy life I led amid the students, not content with fastening me up behind a door, and transferring me from the liberality of the students to the stinginess of the female servant, resolved to rob me of the little ease and comfort I still enjoyed. Bad luck will hunt out and find the unlucky one, though he hides in the uttermost parts of the earth.

I have reason to say this, for the servant was in love with a man, also a servant in the house, who slept in the porch between the street door and the inner one behind which I was fastened. They could meet only at night, to which end they had stolen keys or got false ones. Every night the servant came down stairs, and stopping my mouth with a piece of meat or cheese, opened the door for her lover. For some days, the woman’s bribes kept my conscience asleep. Had she not given me those tasty bribes, I began to fear that I would shrink from a mastiff to a greyhound. But my better nature at last being aroused, I considered what was due to my master, whose bread I ate. I decided that I ought to act as becomes not only honest dogs but all who have masters to serve.

Scip. There now, Berganza, you have spoken what I call true philosophy. But go on. Don’t make too long a yarn – not to say tail – of your history.

BERGANZADIGRESSESAGAIN…

Berg. But, first of all, please tell me what “philosophy” means? For though I use it, I don’t really know what it is – only I guess that it is something good.

Scip. I will tell you briefly: The word is made up of two Greek words, philo, love, and sophia, wisdom – so that it means the love of wisdom, and so a philosopher is a lover of wisdom.

Berg. How smart you are, Scipio! Who on earth taught you Greek words? Scip. Truly you are a simpleton, Berganza, to make so much of a matter that every

schoolboy knows. Indeed, many men pretend to know Greek, though they are ignorant of it, just as with Latin.

Berg. I believe it, Scipio. They annoy me so much that I would put them in a winepress and have all the juice of their knowledge well squeezed out of them, so that they may no more annoy others with their scraps of broken Greek and Latin.

Scip. Now indeed, Berganza, would be a good time to bite your tongue, and I should do the same – for we do nothing but complain.


Berg. Agreed, but I don’t have to mimic Charondas the Tyrian. He published a law that made it a capital offense to enter the national assembly bearing arms. Forgetting this new law, he himself entered the assembly with his sword at his side. When that fact was pointed out to him, he immediately drew his sword and plunged it into himself – becoming the first who made the law, broke it, and suffered its penalty.

But I made no law. All I did was to promise that I would bite my tongue if I happened to utter a harsh word. But things are not as strict these days as in those of the ancients. Laws are made today and broken tomorrow, and perhaps that is not so wrong. Today a man promises to abandon his fault, and tomorrow he falls into a greater one. It is one thing to praise discipline, and another to inflict it on one’s self – indeed, many things are easier said than done. The devil may bite himself, not I – nor do I intend to perform heroic acts of self-denial here on this mat, where I have no witnesses to impress.

Scip. In that case, Berganza, if you were a man you would be a hypocrite, and all your acts would be false, though covered with the cloak of virtue, and done only that men might praise you, like the acts of all hypocrites.

Berg. I don’t know what I would do if I were a man. What I do know is that for now I will not bite my tongue, having so many things yet to tell, and not knowing how or when I will be able to finish them, but fearing that when the sun rises we will be left groping and speechless.

Scip. Heaven forbid! Go on with your story, and don’t run off the road into needless digressions. Only then will you reach the end of it, however long it may be.

BERGANZARESUMESHISSTORY,MOREORLESS

Berg. Well, having seen the servants’ thievery, impudence, and shameful conduct, I determined, like a good servant, to try to put an end to their doings, and I succeeded. The woman, as I have told you, used to come to, ah, amuse herself with the man, ensuring my silence on account of the pieces of meat, bread, or cheese she threw me. Gifts have much power, Scipio.

Scip. Much. Don’t digress. Please go on. Berg. I remember, when I was a student, hearing from the master a Latin adage: Habet

bovem in lingua. Scip. Oh, you and your Latin! Did you already forget what we said about those who mix

Latin with ordinary conversation? Berg. But this bit of Latin is appropriate. The Athenians had a coin stamped with the figure

of an ox. Whenever a judge failed to do justice because he had been corrupted, they used to say, “He has the ox on his tongue.”

Scip. You’ve lost me. Berg. Isn’t it obvious? I was rendered mute many times by the servant’s gifts, and was

careful not to bark when she came down to meet her paramour. Which is why I repeat that gifts have great power.

Scip. I have already agreed on that. If it did not lead to too long a digression, I could supply many examples. But I will speak of these another time, if heaven grants me the chance to narrate my life to you.

Berg. God grant it! Meanwhile, I continue. At last, my integrity prevailed over the servant’s bribes. One dark night, when she came down, as usual, I seized her without barking, so as not to alarm the household. I quickly tore her nightdress to pieces and bit a piece out of her thigh. This little joke confined her to bed for eight days, for which she accounted to her masters by some pretended illness.


When she recovered, she came down another night. I attacked her again, and this time, I scratched her all over as if she had been carding wool. Our battles were always noiseless, and the servant always had the worst of them, but she got her revenge. She cut my rations and my bones, and those of my own body began to show themselves through my skin. But her cutting short my food did not keep me from barking. Trying to put an end to me, she threw me a sponge fried in grease. I perceived the snare, and knew that what she offered me was worse than poison, for it would swell up in my stomach, and never leave it while I was alive. Since it had become impossible for me to guard against the insidious attacks of such a vile enemy, I resolved to get out of her sight and to put some space between her and me.

BERGANZA’STIMEWITHASHERIFF

Berg. One day I found myself unleashed, and took to the street without bidding farewell to any family. Before I had gone 100 paces, I fell in with a sheriff who was a great friend of my first master, Nicholas the butcher. He knew me instantly, and called me by my name. I knew him too, and went up to him with my usual show of wagging affection. He grabbed me by the neck, and said to his men, “This is a famous watchdog who used to belong to a friend of mine. Let’s bring him home.” The men said that if I was a watchdog I would be of great use to them all, and they wanted to lay hold on me to lead me along. But the sheriff said it was not necessary, for I knew him, and would follow him.

My new master put on me a collar studded with brass. Consider, Scipio, my change in fortunes: Yesterday I was a student, and today I found myself a bailiff.

Scip. So wags the world. You don’t need to exaggerate how varied fortune can be, as if there were any difference between the service of a butcher and that of a bailiff. It irks me when I hear some men rail at fortune when they never aspired to more than the life of a stable boy. They curse their ill luck just to make the hearers believe that they have fallen from some high estate.

Berg. Just so. Now this sheriff was in cahoots with an attorney. And the two of them were connected with a pair of pliable wenches. They were rather good looking, but flashy, vulgar, and impudent. These two served their male associates as bait to fish with. You could tell from the distance of a musket shot what sort of women they were by their bawdy dress and behavior. They lurked in the houses of entertainment for strangers, and there was hardly a Breton tourist with whom they did not grapple. Whenever a bumpkin fell into their snares, they told the sheriff and the attorney what inn they were going to, and the latter then seized the party as lewd persons. But no one ever got taken to prison, because the strangers always paid money to get out of the scrape.

One day, Colendra – the sheriff’s mistress – picked up a Breton, made an appointment with him for the night, and informed her friend. They were hardly undressed before the sheriff, the attorney, two bailiffs, and I entered the room. The amorous pair were sorely distressed, and the sheriff, exclaiming loudly against the enormity of their conduct, ordered them to dress quickly and go with him to prison. The Breton was dismayed; the attorney interceded from avowed motives of compassion, and prevailed on the sheriff to commute the penalty to only 100 reals.

The Breton asked for a pair of leather pants he had laid on a chair at the end of the room, and in which there was money to pay his ransom, but the pants were nowhere to be seen. The fact was, that when I entered the room, my nostrils picked up a delightful odor of ham. I followed the scent and found a nice piece of ham in one of the pockets of the pants, which I carried off into the street so I could enjoy the meat on my own.


After doing so, I returned to the house, where I found the Breton bawling in his barbarous language, and calling for his pants, in one of the pockets of which he said he had 50 gold crowns. The attorney suspected that either Colendra or the bailiffs had stolen the money. The sheriff, thinking the same thing, took them aside, and questioned them. None of them knew anything, and they all swore at each other like sailors. Seeing the hubbub, I returned to the street where I had left the pants, having no use for the money they held. But they were gone, for some passerby had no doubt picked them up.

The sheriff, in despair at finding that the Breton had no money to bribe with, resorted to trying to extort something from the mistress of the inn. He called for her, and in she came half dressed. She was in ill humor when she saw and heard the Breton bawling for his money, Colendra crying in her shift, the sheriff storming, the attorney in a passion, and the bailiffs ransacking the room. The sheriff ordered her to put on her clothes and be off with him to prison for allowing men and women to meet for assignations in her house. Then the row grew even more furious.

“My fine gentlemen,” said the hostess, “I want none of your tricks, for I know a thing or two. I’ll have none of your blustering, but shut your mouths, and go your ways in God’s name. For I am all too well acquainted with round-heeled Señora Colendra here, and I also know that for many months past she has been kept by the sheriff. Don’t provoke me to tell any more, but give this lodger back his money, and let us all part as friends. For I am a respectable woman, and my husband is a gentleman whose patent of nobility has fancy seals all hanging to it, God be thanked! And I carry on this business with the greatest propriety. I hang the table of charges where everybody can see it, so don’t meddle with me, or by the Lord I’ll soon settle your business. It is no affair of mine if women come in with my lodgers. They have the keys to their rooms, and I can’t be expected to see through walls.”

My masters were astounded at the landlady’s harangue, and at just how well acquainted she was with the story of their lives. But, seeing nobody else from whom they could squeeze money, they still pretended that they meant to drag her to prison. She appealed to heaven against the injustice of their behaving that way when her husband was absent, and he a man of such quality. The Breton bellowed for his 50 crowns and the bailiffs persisted in maintaining that they had never laid eyes on his pants. The attorney privately urged the sheriff to search Colendra’s clothes, as he suspected she must have taken the 50 crowns, since she was known to grope in the pockets of those who took up with her company. Colendra declared that the Breton was drunk, and that it was all a lie about his money.

In brief, all was confusion, oaths, and bawling, and there would have been no end to the uproar if the lieutenant magistrate had not just then entered the room, having heard the caterwauling as he was going his rounds. He asked what it was all about, and the landlady replied in copious detail.

She told him about the damsel Colendra (who by this time had got dressed), made known how she was connected to the sheriff, and exposed her practice of trick-rolling her johns. She protested her own innocence, and that she would never consent to a woman of ill repute entering her house. She made herself out to be a saint and her husband a paragon, and called for a servant to fetch her husband’s patent of nobility, that she might show it to the Señor Lieutenant. He would then be able to judge whether the wife of so respectable a man was capable of anything but what was quite correct. If she did keep a lodging house, it was because she could not help it. God knows that she would rather have some comfortable independence to live upon at her ease.


The lieutenant, worn down by her wordiness and her mewling about the patent of gentility, said to her, “Sister hostess, I am willing to believe that your husband is a gentleman, but then you must allow he is only a gentleman innkeeper.”

The landlady replied with great dignity, “And where is the family, however good its blood may be, but you may pick some holes in its coat?”

“Well, all I have to say, sister, is that you must put on your clothes and come away to prison.”

This brought her down from her high horse at once. She tore her hair, cried, screamed, and prayed, but all in vain. The relentless lieutenant carried the whole party off to prison – that is, the Breton, Colendra, and the landlady. I learned later that the Breton lost his 50 crowns, and was also ordered to pay court costs. The landlady had to pay as much more. Colendra was let off scot free, and the very day she was let go she picked up a sailor, from whom she earned enough to make good her disappointment in the ill-fated affair with the Breton.

So you see, Scipio, what serious troubles my gluttony caused. Scip. I would say they were rather due to your master’s rascality. Berg. Well, worse remains to be told, since I am loath to speak ill of sheriffs and attorneys. Scip. Yes, but speaking ill of one is not speaking ill of all. Many, many attorneys are honest

and upright. They don’t all take fees from both parties in a suit, or extort more than their right, or go prying into other people’s business to entangle them in legal webs, or connive with the justice to fleece one side and skin the other. Not every sheriff colludes with thieves, or keeps a decoy duck in the shape of a mistress, as your master did. Many are gentlemen in feeling and conduct, neither arrogant nor insolent, neither rogues nor knaves.

Berg. My master was more blameworthy than most. He set himself up as a man of great bravery, promoted himself on making famous captures, and sustained his reputation for courage without risk to his person (but at some cost to his wallet). I’ll explain:

One day at the Puerta de Jerez he fell in, singlehanded, with six notorious troublemakers. I was of no help, as he muzzled me during the day. He appeared so intrepid and brave. He dashed in and out among the swords of the ruffians and made as light of them as if they were willow branches. It was wonderful to behold the agility with which he assaulted, his thrusts and parries, and with what quickness of eye he prevented his enemies from attacking him from behind.

In short, both I and all the spectators of the fight thought him very heroic, having fought his men all the way from the Puerta de Jerez to the statues of the college of Maese Rodrigo, a good hundred paces and more. Having put them to flight, he returned to collect the trophies of the battle, consisting of three sheaths. As my master walked through the streets, people pointed to him and said, “There goes the valiant man who ventured, alone, to take on the young brigands of Andalusia.”

He spent the remainder of the day in walking about the city, to let himself be seen, and at night we went to the suburb of Triana, to a street near the powder mill, where my master, looking about to see first whether anyone observed him, entered a house, with me following him. There, in the courtyard, we found the six rogues he had fought with, all untrussed, and without cloaks or swords. One fellow, apparently the landlord, had a big jar of wine in one hand and a great goblet in the other, and, filling a sparkling glass, he drank to all the company.

No sooner had they set eyes on my master than they all ran to him with open arms. They all drank to his health, and he returned the compliment. Were I to recount all that took place there – the supper that was served, the fights and the robberies they related, the ladies whom they praised or disparaged, the praises they bestowed on each other, the absent rogues whom they


named, the clever tricks they played, jumping up from supper to exhibit their sleight of hand, the pointed words they used, and, finally, the figure of the host, whom all respected as their lord and father – if I were to attempt this, I would entangle myself in a maze from which I could never extricate myself.

I figured out that the master of the house, Monipodio, was a bit shady, and that my master’s battle of the morning had been rehearsed in advance between him and his opponents, with all its circumstances, including the dropping of the sword sheaths, which my master now delivered, in lieu of his share of the reckoning. They caroused almost till dawn.

By way of a final treat, they told my master of a foreign character, just arrived in the city. He was likely an abler swordsman than they themselves, and they denounced him from envy. My master captured him the next night as he lay in bed, but had he been up and armed, I doubt that he would not have allowed himself to be taken so quietly. This capture, coming close upon the heels of the pretended fight, enhanced my cowardly master’s fame. He had no more courage than a large rabbit, but sustained his valorous reputation by treating and feasting, so that he frittered away all the gains of his office, both fair and foul, on bolstering his false renown.

I am afraid I weary you, Scipio, but be patient and listen to another affair that befell him, which I will tell you without exaggeration:

Two thieves stole a fine horse in Antequera (about 100 miles to the east), brought him to Seville, and in order to sell him without risk, adopted an ingenious strategy. They stayed at two different inns, and one of them filed a complaint in court to the effect that Pedro de Losada owed him 400 Rea, money lent, as evidenced by a handwritten note, signed by the said Pedro, which he produced in evidence. The lieutenant magistrate directed that Losada should be called upon to state whether or not he acknowledged the note as his own, and if he did, that he should be compelled to pay the amount by seizure of his goods, or go to prison.

My master and his friend the attorney were employed in this business. One of the thieves took them to the lodgings of the other, who at once acknowledged his note of hand, admitted the debt, and offered his horse in payment of the amount. My master was greatly taken with the animal, and resolved to have it if it were to be sold. The time prescribed by the law being expired, the horse was put up for sale. My master employed a friend to bid for it, and it was knocked down to him for 500 reals, though well worth 1,200 or 1,300. Thus, one thief got paid for a debt not due to him, the other a quittance of which he had no need, and my master took custody of the horse, which was as fatal to him as the famous Sejanus was to his owners.

The thieves took off at once. Two days later, my master, after having repaired the horse’s trappings, rode him into the Plaza de San Francisco, as conceited as a bumpkin in his holiday clothes. Everybody complimented him on his bargain, declaring the horse was worth 150 ducats as surely as an egg was worth a farthing. But while he was prancing about, and showing off his own person and his horse’s paces, two well-dressed men of good figure entered the square, one of whom cried out, “Why, bless my soul! That is my horse, Ironfoot, stolen from me a few days ago in Antequera.” Four servants, who accompanied him, said the same thing. My master was greatly crestfallen. The gentleman appealed to justice, produced his proofs, and they were so compelling that sentence was given in his favor, and my master had to turn over the horse. It came out how, through the hands of justice itself, the thieves had sold what they had stolen, and almost everybody rejoiced that my master’s covetousness had made him burn his fingers.

His disasters did not end there. That night the lieutenant, making his rounds, was told that there were robbers abroad as far as San Julian’s wards. Passing a crossroad, he saw a man running away, and taking me by the collar, “At him, good dog!” he said, “Sic him, boy!”


Disgusted as I was with my master’s villainies, and eager to obey the lieutenant’s orders, I promptly seized my own master and pulled him down to the ground, where I would have torn him to pieces if the thief-takers had not pulled us apart. They wanted to punish me, and even to beat me to death with sticks. And they would have done so if the lieutenant had not told them to let me alone, for I had done only what he ordered me. The warning was not lost on me, so without taking my leave of anybody, I leaped through an opening in the wall, and before daybreak, I was in Mayrena, a place about 12 miles from Seville.

BERGANZAPERFORMSWITHSOLDIERS(ANDADRUMMER)

Berg. There, I fell in with a party of soldiers going to embark at Cartagena, on Spain’s southeast coast. Among them were four of my late master’s ruffian friends. One was a drummer, who had been a bounty hunter and a great buffoon, as drummers frequently are. They all spoke to me, asking after my master as if I could reply. But the one who showed the greatest liking for me was the drummer, so I decided to attach myself to him if he would let me, and to accompany the platoon whether they were bound for Italy or Belgium. For despite the proverb that ‘a blockhead at home is a blockhead all the world over,’ you must agree with me that sojourning among various people makes men wise.

Scip. That is so true. I heard from a master of mine, a clever man, that the famous Greek, Ulysses, was renowned as wise solely because he had traveled and seen many men and nations. So I applaud your choice to go with the soldiers, wherever they might take you.

Berg. To help him display his jugglery, the drummer taught me to dance to the sound of the drum and to play other tricks such as no other dog than I could ever have acquired. The troops marched by short stages, and we had no commissary to control us. The captain was a mere lad, but a perfect gentleman, and a great Christian. The ensign had just left the page’s hall at court, and the sergeant was a great conductor of companies from the place where they were raised to the port of embarkation. The unit was full of ruffians whose insolent behavior on the road resulted in curses directed where they were not deserved – the prince. It is the misfortune of the good prince to be blamed by some of his subjects, for faults committed by others of them, which he could not remedy if he would, for the circumstances of war are for the most part inevitably harsh, oppressive, and untoward.

In the course of a fortnight, what with my own cleverness, and the diligence of my new master, I learned to jump for nobility, and to refrain from jumping for the good-for-nothing landlady. He taught me to prance on my hind legs like a Lipizzaner, to move in a ring like a mill horse, and other feats that made observers suspect that they were performed by a demon in the shape of a dog. The drummer called me “the wise dog,” and no sooner did we arrive at a stopping place than he went about, beating his drum, and giving notice to all who desired to behold the marvelous graces and performances of the wise dog, that they were to be seen at such a house, for either eight or four reals a head, according to the greater or lesser wealth of the place. After these promotions, everybody ran to see me, and no one went away without wonder and delight.

My master exulted in the gains I brought him, which enabled him to maintain six of his comrades and himself like princes. This aroused envy and covetousness among the rogues he was with, and they were always watching for a chance to steal me, for any way of making money by sport has great appeal. This is why Spain has so many puppeteers, so many who go about with peep shows, so many others who hawk pens and ballads, though the market value of their assets would not be enough to keep them for a day. Yet they are to be found in taverns and drinking-


shops all year round, which indicates that the cost of their guzzling is defrayed other than by the profits of their business. They are all good-for-nothing vagabonds, bread weevils, and winesops.

Scip. No more of that, Berganza! Let us not go over the same ground again. Continue your story, for the night is waning, and I don’t want, when the sun rises, that we should be left in the shades of silence.

Berg. Keep still and listen, then. As it is an easy thing to extend and improve our inventions, my master, seeing how well I imitated a Lipizzaner, made me housings of gilt leather and a little saddle that he fitted on my back. He put on it a little figure of a man, with lance in hand, and taught me to run straight at a ring fixed between two stakes. As soon as I perfected that, my master announced that on that day the wise dog would run at the ring, and exhibit other new and incomparable feats, which, indeed, I drew from my own invention, to fulfill my master’s claims.

We marched next to Montilla, about 100 miles east of Seville. The town belonged to the Marquis of Priego, head of the house of Aguilar and Montilla. My master was quartered, at his own request, in a hospital. He made his usual proclamation, and as my great fame had already reached the town, the courtyard was filled with spectators in less than an hour. My master rejoiced to see such a rich harvest of yokels, and resolved to show himself to be a first-rate conjuror. The entertainment began with my leaping through a hoop. He had a willow switch in his hand, and when he lowered it, that was a signal for me to leap – and when he kept it raised, I was not to budge.

On that fateful day, he began by saying, “Come, my friend, jump for that juvenile old gentleman, you know, who dyes his beard. Or if you won’t, jump for the pomp and grandeur of Donna Pimpinela de Plafagonia, who was the fellow servant of the Galician kitchen wench at Valdeastillas. Don’t you like that, my boy? Then jump for the bachelor Pasillas, who signs himself Ph.D. without having any degree. How lazy you are! Why don’t you jump? Oh! I understand! I am up to your roguery! Jump, then, for the wine of Esquivias, a match for that of Ciudad Real, St. Martin, and Rivadavia.” He lowered the switch, and I jumped in accordance with the signal. Then, addressing the audience,

“Don’t imagine, worshipful audience,” he said, “that it is any laughing matter what this dog knows. I have taught him four-and-twenty performances, the simplest of which is worth going 90 miles to see. He can dance the zaraband and the chacona better than their inventor. He tosses off a pint of wine without spilling a drop. He can sing sol, fa, mi, re as well as any sexton. All these things, and many others that remain to be told, your worships shall witness while my company remains here. At present, our wise one will give another jump, and then we will enter upon the main business.”

Having inflamed the audience’s curiosity with this harangue, he turned to me and said, “Come now, my lad, and go through all your jumps with your usual grace and agility. But this time, it shall be for the sake of the famous witch who is said to belong to this place.”

Well! The words were hardly out of his mouth, when the matron of the hospital, an old woman, who seemed upwards of 70, screamed out, “Rogue, charlatan, swindler, there is no witch here. If you mean Camacha, she has paid the penalty of her sin, and is where God only knows. If you mean me, you juggling cheat, I am no witch, and never was one in my life. And if I ever was reputed to be a witch, I may thank false witnesses, and the injustice of the law, and a presumptuous and ignorant judge. All the world knows the life of penance I lead, not for any acts of witchcraft, which I have never done, but for other great sins that I have committed. So get out of the hospital, you rascally sheepskin thumper, or by all the saints I’ll make you wish you had.”


And with that, she began to screech at such a rate, and pour such a furious torrent of abuse upon my master, that he was utterly confounded. In short, she would not allow the entertainment to proceed under any circumstances. My master did not care much about that, as he already had his money in his pocket, but he announced that he would give the performance next day in another hospital. The people went away cursing the old woman, and calling her a witch, and a bearded hag as well.

BERGANZAENGAGESWITHCAÑIZARES,A‘WITCH’

Berg. Even after all that, we remained in the hospital that night, and the old woman meeting me alone in the yard, said, “Is that you, Montiel, my child? Is that you?” I looked up as she spoke, and gazed steadily at her. Seeing that, she came to me with tears in her eyes, threw her arms round my neck, and would have kissed my mouth if I had allowed her. But I was disgusted, and would not have it.

Scip. You were quite right, for it is no treat to kiss or be kissed by an old woman. Berg. I should have told you this next part at the beginning of my story, as it might have

diminished the surprise we felt at finding ourselves endowed with speech: The old woman said to me, “Follow me, Montiel, my son, so you can see my room. And be sure you come tonight, so we may be alone together, for I have many things to tell you of great importance for you to know.”

I lowered my head in token of obedience, which confirmed her in her belief that I was the dog Montiel whom she had been long seeking, as she told me later. I remained quite bewildered, longing for the night to see what might be the meaning of this mystery. As I had heard her called a witch, I expected wonderful things from our next meeting. At last, the time came, and I entered the room, which was small, and low, and dimly lit by an earthenware lamp. The old woman trimmed it, sat down on a chest, drew me to her, and without speaking a word, fell to embracing me, and I fell to preventing her from kissing me.

“I always hoped to heaven,” the old woman began, “that I should see my grandson before my eyes were closed in my final sleep. And now that I have seen you, let death come when it will, and release me from this life of sorrow. There once lived in this city the most famous witch in the world, called ‘Camacha de Montilla.’ She was so artful that famous witches of the past such as Circe and Medea, of whom old histories are full, could not hold a candle to her.

“She covered the sun with clouds when she pleased. And when the whim seized her, she made the murkiest sky clear up at once. She fetched men in an instant from remote lands; she relieved the distresses of damsels who had forgotten themselves for a moment; she enabled widows to console themselves without loss of reputation; she unmarried wives, and married those she pleased. She had roses in her garden in December and gathered wheat in January. To make watercress grow in a hand basin was a trifle to her, or to show any persons whom you wanted to see, either dead or alive, in a looking glass, or on the nail of a newborn infant. It was reported that she turned men into brutes and that she made an ass of a sexton, and used him as a beast of burden for six years.

“I never could figure out how this was done. For as for what is related of those ancient sorceresses, that they turned men into beasts, the learned are of the opinion that this means only that by their great beauty and their fascinations, they so captivated men and subjected them to their humors, as to make them seem to be unreasoning animals. But in you I have living evidence to the contrary, for I know that you are a rational being, and I see you in the form of a dog.


Unless indeed this is done through that art that they call Tropelia, which makes people mistake appearances and take one thing for another.

“Be this as it may, what mortifies me is that neither your mother nor I, who were disciples of the great Camacha, ever came to know as much as she did, and not for want of talent, but due to her inordinate selfishness. She could never endure that we should learn the higher mysteries of her art, and become as wise as she. Your mother was called ‘Montiela,’ and next to Camacha, she was the most famous of witches. My name is Cañizares – and if not as proficient as either of these two, at least I don’t yield to them in good will to the art. It is true that in boldness of spirit, in the bravery with which she entered a magic circle and remained within it with a legion of fiends, your mother equaled Camacha herself. As for me, I was always somewhat timid, and contented myself with conjuring half a legion. But though I say it immodestly, in the matter of compounding witches’ ointment, I was equal to either of them and to any now living who follow our rules.

“But ever since I have felt how fast my life is hastening away upon the wings of time, I have sought to withdraw from all the wickedness of witchcraft in which I was plunged for many years, and I have only amused myself with white magic, a practice so addictive that it is most difficult to abandon. Your mother acted in much the same way. She abandoned many evil practices and performed many righteous works, but she would not relinquish white magic to the hour of her death. She had no malady, but died by the sorrow brought upon her by her mistress, Camacha, who hated her because she saw that in a short time Montiela would know as much as she herself, unless indeed she was jealous for some other reason I don’t know.

“Your mother was pregnant, and her time being come, Camacha was her midwife. She received in her hands what your mother brought forth, and showed her that she had borne two puppy dogs. ‘This is a bad business,’ said Camacha. ‘There is some knavery here. But, sister Montiela, I am your friend, and I will conceal this unfortunate birth. So have patience and get well, and be assured that your misfortune will remain an inviolable secret.’

“I was present at this extraordinary occurrence, and was not less astounded than your mother. She left, taking the whelps with her, and I remained to comfort the doula, who could not believe what had happened. At last Camacha’s end drew near, and when she felt herself at the point of death, she sent for Montiela and told her how she had turned her sons into dogs on account of a certain grudge she bore her, but that she need not distress herself, for they would return to their natural forms when it was least expected. But this would not happen ‘until they shall see the exalted quickly brought low, and the lowly exalted by an arm that is mighty to do it.’

“Your mother wrote down this prophecy and carved it deep in her memory. So did I, so I could tell it to one of you if I ever had the chance. And in hopes to recognize you, I have made it a practice to call every dog of your color by your mother’s name, to see if any of them would answer to one so unlike those usually given to dogs. And this evening, when I saw you do so many amazing things, and they called you ‘the wise dog,’ and also when you looked up at me upon my calling to you in the yard, I believed that you were really the son of Montiela.

“It is with extreme pleasure I tell you the history of your birth and the manner in which you are to recover your original form. I wish it was as easy as it was for the golden ass of Apuleius, who just had to eat a rose to be restored to human form. But your transformation depends upon the actions of others, and not on your own efforts. Meanwhile, you need to commend yourself heartily to God and hope that the prophecy is fulfilled quickly. For, since it was pronounced by Camacha, it will doubtless be accomplished. Then you and your brother, if he is alive, will see


yourselves as you would wish to be. It grieves me that I am so near my end that I have no hope of seeing that joyful event.

“I have often longed to ask my goat how matters would turn out with you at last. But he never gives a straight answer, but as crooked and perplexing as possible. That is always the way with our lord and master. There is no use in asking him anything, for with one truth he mingles a thousand lies, and from what I have noted of his replies, it appears that he knows nothing for certain of the future, but only by way of conjecture. At the same time he so befools us that, in spite of a thousand treacherous tricks he plays us, we can’t shake off his influence.

“We go to see him a long way from here in a great field, where we meet a multitude of warlocks and witches and are feasted without measure. Other things take place that I can’t bring myself to mention, nor will I offend your chaste ears by repeating things so filthy and abominable. Many believe that we frequent these assemblies only in imagination, wherein the demon presents to us the images of all those things that we afterward relate as having occurred to us in reality. Others believe that we actually go to them in body and soul. I believe that both opinions are true, since we know not when we go in the one manner or in the other. For all that happens to us in imagination does so with such intensity, that it is impossible to distinguish between it and reality. Their worships the inquisitors have had sundry opportunities of investigating this matter, in the cases of some of us whom they have had under their hands, and I believe that they have verified what I state.

“I would like to shake off this sin, and I have exerted myself to that end. I have got myself appointed matron to this hospital. I tend the poor, and some die who afford me a livelihood either by what they leave me or by what I find among their rags, through the great care I always take to examine them well. I say but few prayers, and only in public, but grumble a good deal in secret. It is better for me to be a hypocrite than an open sinner, for my present good works efface from the memory of those who know me the bad ones of my past life. After all, pretended sanctity injures no one but the person who practices it.

“Montiel, here is my advice: Be good all you can, but if you must be wicked, try as hard as you can not to appear so. I am a witch, I don’t deny it, and your mother was one, too. But the appearances we put on were always enough to maintain credibility in the world’s eyes.

Three days before she died, we were both present at a grand Sabbath of witches in a valley of the Pyrenees. Yet when she died it was with such calmness and serenity, that were it not for some grimaces she made a few minutes before she gave up the ghost, you would have thought she lay upon a bed of flowers. But her two children lay heavy at her heart, and even to her last gasp she never would forgive Camacha, she had such a resolute spirit. I closed her eyes, followed her to her grave, and there took my last look at her. Though, indeed, I have not lost the hope of seeing her again before I die, for they say that several persons have met her going about the churchyards and the crossroads in various forms. Who knows but I may fall in with her some time or other, and be able to ask her whether I can do anything for the relief of her conscience?”

Every word that the old hag uttered in praise of the woman she called my mother went like a knife to my heart. I longed to fall upon her and tear her to pieces, and refrained only because I did not want death to find her in such a wicked state. Finally, she told me that she intended to anoint herself that night and go to one of their customary assemblies, and inquire of her master as to what was yet to befall me. I wanted to ask her what ointments she made use of – and it seemed as though she read my thoughts, for she replied to my question as though I had spoken it.

“This ointment,” she said, “is composed of the juices of exceedingly cold herbs – and not, as the vulgar assert, of the blood of children whom we strangle. And here you may ask what


pleasure or profit can it be to the devil to make us murder little innocents, since he knows that being baptized they go as sinless creatures to heaven, and every Christian soul that escapes him is to him a source of poignant anguish? I know not what answer to give except by quoting the old saying, that ‘some people would give both their eyes to make their enemy lose one.’

“He may do it for the sake of the unimaginable grief that parents suffer from the murder of their children. But what is still more important to him is to accustom us to repeatedly committing such a cruel and perverse sin. And all this God allows by reason of our sinfulness – for, without his permission, the devil can’t hurt an ant. In fact, one day when I asked him to destroy a vineyard belonging to an enemy of mine, he told me that he could not hurt a leaf of it, for God would not allow him.

“Hence you may understand when you come to be a human, that all the casual evils that befall men, kingdoms, and cities, and peoples, sudden deaths, shipwrecks, devastations, and all sorts of losses and disasters, come from the hand of the Almighty, and by his sovereign permission. We ourselves cause the evils that we call ‘crime.’ God is without sin, so it follows that we ourselves are the authors of sin, forming it in thought, word, and deed – God permitting all this by reason of our sinfulness, as I have already said.

“You may ask, if you understand me, who made me a theologian? And perhaps you will say to yourself, ‘Confound the old hag! Why doesn’t she quit being a witch since she knows so much? Why does not she turn to God, since she knows that he is readier to forgive sin than to permit it?’ To this, I reply that the habit of sinning becomes ingrained as a second nature, and that of being a witch transforms itself into flesh and blood. Amid all its ardor, which is great, it brings with it a chilling influence that so overcomes the soul as to freeze and benumb its faith. So what follows is a forgetfulness of itself, and the soul remembers neither the terrors with which God threatens it nor the glories with which He allures it. In fact, as sin is fleshly and sensual, it must exhaust and stupefy all the feelings, and render the soul incapable of rising to embrace any good thought, or to clasp the hand that God in His mercy continually extends. I have one of those souls. I see it clearly, but the empire of the senses chains my will, and I have ever been and ever shall be bad.

“But let us quit this subject, and go back to that of our magic unguents. They are of so cold a nature that they take away all our senses when we anoint ourselves with them. We remain stretched on the ground, and then they say we experience all those things in imagination that we suppose to occur to us in reality. Sometimes, after we have anointed and changed ourselves into fowl, foals, or deer, we go to where our master awaits us. There we recover our own forms and enjoy pleasures that I will not describe, for they are such as the memory is ashamed to recall, and the tongue refuses to tell.

“The long and short of it is, I am a witch, and cover my many delinquencies with the cloak of hypocrisy. It is true that even though some esteem and honor me as a good woman, many bawl in my ear the name imprinted upon your mother and me by order of an ill-tempered judge, who turned us over to the hands of the hangman. And, since we didn’t bribe him, he beat us mercilessly upon our shoulders. But that is past. All things pass, memories wear out, lives don’t renew themselves, tongues grow tired, and new events dim the memory of prior ones.

“I am matron of a hospital. My behavior appears plausible. My unguents procure me some pleasant moments, and at 75 I am not so old but that I may live another year. I can’t fast on account of my years, nor pray on account of the swimming in my head, nor go on pilgrimages for the weakness of my legs, nor give alms because I am poor, nor think rightly because I am given to backbiting, and to be able to backbite one must first think evil.


“I know for all that that God is good and merciful and that he knows what is in store for me, and that is enough. So let us drop this conversation, which really makes me melancholy. Come and see me anoint myself. For every sorrow has a cure, and though the pleasures that the devil affords us are illusive and fictitious, yet they appear to us to be pleasures. And sensual delight is much greater in imagination than in actual fruition, though it is otherwise with true joys.”

After this long harangue, she got up, and took the lamp into another, smaller room. I followed her, filled with a thousand conflicting thoughts, and amazed at what I had heard and what I expected to see. Cañizares hung the lamp against the wall, hastily stripped herself to her shift, took a jug from a corner, put her hand into it, and, muttering between her teeth, anointed herself from her feet to the crown of her head. Before she had finished she said to me, that whether her body remained senseless in that room, or whether it quitted it, I was not to be frightened, nor fail to wait there until morning, when she would bring me word of what was to befall me until I should be a man. I signified my assent by lowering my head, and she finished her unction, and stretched herself on the floor like a corpse. I put my mouth to hers and perceived that she did not breathe at all. I must say, Scipio, that I was terribly frightened at being shut up in that narrow room with that figure before me, which I will describe to you as well as I can.

She was more than six feet tall, a mere skeleton covered with a black wrinkled skin. Her breasts were like two dried, puckered ox-bladders, her lips were blackened, her long teeth locked together, her nose was hooked, her eyes starting from her head, her hair hung in elf-locks on her hollow wrinkled cheeks – in short, she was completely, diabolically hideous. I remained gazing on her for a while, and was overcome with horror as I contemplated the hideous spectacle of her body and the worse occupation of her soul. I wanted to bite her to see if she would come to herself, but I could not find a spot on her whole body that did not fill me with disgust.

Nevertheless, I seized her by one heel and dragged her to the yard, without her ever giving any sign of feeling. There, with the sky above me, my fear left me, or at least lessened, so much as to give me courage to await the result of that wicked woman’s expedition, and the news she was to bring me. Meanwhile, I asked myself, how can this old woman be at once so knowing and so wicked? How can she distinguish so well between casual and culpable evils? How can she understand so much about God, yet act so much from the devil’s prompting? How can she sin so much from choice, not having ignorance as an excuse?

In these reflections I passed the night. The day dawned and found us both in the court, she lying still insensible, and I on my haunches beside her, watching her hideous countenance attentively. The people of the hospital came out, and seeing this spectacle, some of them exclaimed, “The pious Cañizares is dead! See how emaciated she is with fasting and penance.” Others felt her pulse, and finding that she was not dead, concluded that she was in a trance of holy ecstasy. Others said, “This old hag is clearly a witch, and is no doubt anointed, for saints are never seen in such an indecent condition when lost in religious ecstasy. And she has had the reputation of a witch rather than a saint.”

Some onlookers went so far as to stick pins in her flesh up to the head – without ever waking her. It was seven o’clock before she came to herself. And then, finding how she was stuck over with pins, bitten in the heels, and her back flayed by being dragged from her room, and seeing so many eyes intently fixed upon her, she concluded correctly that I had been the cause of her exposure.

“What, you thankless, ignorant, malicious villain!” she cried. “Is this my reward for the acts I did for your mother and those I intended to do for you?” Finding myself in peril of my life under the talons of that ferocious harpy, I shook her off. Seizing her by her wrinkled flank, I


worried and dragged her all about the yard, while she shrieked for help from the fangs of that evil spirit.

At these words, most of those present believed that I must be one of those fiends who are continually at enmity with good Christians. Some were for sprinkling me with holy water, some were for pulling me off the old woman, but dared not. Others bawled out words to exorcise me. The witch howled, I tightened my grip with my teeth, the mayhem increased, and my master was in despair, hearing it said that I was a fiend.

A few who knew nothing of exorcisms caught up three or four sticks and began to beat me. Not liking the joke, I let the old woman go. In three bounds I was in the street, and in a few more I was outside the town, pursued by a host of boys, shouting, “Out of the way! The wise dog has gone mad!” Others said, “He is not mad, but he is the devil in a dog’s form!” The people of the place were persuaded that I was a devil by the tricks they had seen me perform, by the words spoken by the old woman when she woke out of her infernal trance, and by the extraordinary speed with which I shot away from them, so that I seemed to vanish from before them like a being from the other world.

In six hours I cleared 36 miles and arrived at a camp of Roma in a field near Granada. There I rested awhile, for some of the Roma who recognized me as the “wise dog” received me gladly and hid me in a cave so that I might not be found if anyone came in search of me. I learned later that they had intended to make money off of me just as my master the drummer had done. I remained three weeks among them, during which I observed their habits and ways of life – and these are so remarkable that I must give you an account of them.

Scip. Before you go any further, Berganza, we had better consider what the witch said to you, and see if there can possibly be a grain of truth in the great lie to which you give credit. Now, what an enormous absurdity it would be to believe that Camacha could change human beings into brutes, or that the sexton served her for years in the form of an ass. All these things, and the like, are cheats, lies, or illusions of the devil. And if it now seems that we have some understanding and reason – since we speak, though we are really dogs or bear that form – we have already said that this is a portentous and unparalleled case. Though it is plainly before us, yet we must suspend our belief until the event determines what it should be.

Do you need more detail? Consider what frivolous things Camacha foretold our restoration to depend on. That which seems a prophecy to you is nothing but a fable, or one of those old woman’s tales, such as the headless horse, and the wand of virtues, which are told by the fireside in the long winter nights. For if it were anything else, it would already have been accomplished – unless, indeed, it is to be taken only allegorically.

Now for your prophecy: “They are to recover their true forms when they see the exalted quickly brought low and the lowly exalted by a hand that is mighty to do it.” If we take this in the sense I have mentioned, it seems to me to mean that we will recover our forms when we see those who yesterday were at the top of fortune’s wheel today cast down in the mire, and held of little account by those who most esteemed them. Likewise, when we see others who, but two hours ago, seemed sent into the world only to figure as units in the sum of its population, and now are lifted up to the summit of prosperity. Now, if our return to human form were to depend on this, why we have already seen it, and we see it every hour. I infer, then, that Camacha’s words are to be taken, not in an allegorical, but in a literal, sense. But this will not help us any better, because we have many times seen what they say, and we are still dogs, as you see.

And so Camacha was a cheat, Cañizares an artful hag, and Montiela a fool and a rogue – be it said without offense, if by chance she was the mother of us both – or yours, for I won’t claim


her as mine. Furthermore, I say that the true meaning is a game of ninepins, in which those that stand up are quickly knocked down, and the fallen are set up again, and that by a hand that is able to do it. Now think whether we have ever seen a game of ninepins, or having seen it, have then been changed into men?

Berg. I quite agree with you, Scipio, and think more highly of your judgment than ever. From all you have said, I believe that all that has happened to us before, and that is now happening, is a dream. But even so, let us enjoy this blessing of speech and the great experience of holding human discourse all the time we may. And so let it not weary you to hear me relate what befell me with the Roma who hid me in the cave.

Scip. With great pleasure. I will listen to you, that you in your turn may listen to me, when I relate, if heaven pleases, the events of my life.

BERGANZA’STIMEAMONGTHEROMA

Berg. My occupation among the Roma was to contemplate their numberless tricks and frauds, and the thefts they all commit from the time they are out of diapers and can walk alone. You know what a multitude there is of them dispersed all over Spain. They all know each other, keep up a constant intelligence among themselves, and reciprocally pass off and carry away the articles they have stolen.

They render less obedience to their king than to one of their own people whom they call “Count,” and who bears the surname of Maldonado, as do all his descendants. This is not because they come from that noble line, but because a page belonging to a cavalier of that name fell in love with a beautiful Roma, who would not yield to his wishes unless he became a Roma and made her his wife. The page did so, and was so much liked by the other Roma, that they chose him for their lord, chose to obey him, and in homage rendered to him a portion of everything they stole.

When they are not busy being idle, the Roma employ themselves in working in iron, and you can always see them hawking pincers, tongs, hammers, fire shovels, and so forth. Selling them facilitates their thefts. All the women are midwives, so they can bring forth children without cost or attendants.

They wash their newborn infants in cold water and accustom them from birth to death to endure all sorts of bad weather. Consequently, they are all strong, robust, nimble leapers, runners, and dancers. They always marry among themselves, so that their trickery may not come to be known, except by their own people. The women are well behaved to their husbands, and few of them interact except with persons of their own race.

When they seek for alms, it is rather by tricks and juggling than by appeals to charity. And as no one puts faith in them, they keep none, but call themselves downright vagabonds. I have never seen a Romani woman taking the sacrament, though I have often been in churches. Their only thoughts are how to cheat and steal. They are fond of talking about their thefts and how they accomplished them.

A Roma, for instance, related one day in my presence how he had swindled a countryman: The Roma had an ass with a docked tail, and he fitted a false tail to the stump so well that it

looked quite real. Then he took the ass to market and sold it to a countryman for ten ducats. After pocketing the money, he told the countryman that if he wanted another ass, the brother to the one he had bought, and every bit as good, he could have it at a bargain.

The countryman told him to go and fetch it, and meanwhile, he would drive that one home. Away went the purchaser. The Roma followed him, and somehow or other, it was not long


before he had stolen the ass, from which he immediately removed the false tail, leaving only a bare stump. He then changed the halter and saddle, and had the audacity to go and offer the animal for sale to the countryman, before the latter had discovered his loss.

The bargain was soon made. The purchaser went into his house to fetch the money to pay for the second ass, and there he discovered the loss of the first. Even as stupid as he was, he suspected that the Roma had stolen the animal, and he refused to pay him. The Roma brought forward as witness the man who had received the transfer tax on the first transaction, and who swore that he had sold the countryman an ass with a bushy tail, quite different from the second one. And a sheriff, who was present, backed up the Roma’s story so firmly that the countryman was forced to pay for the ass twice.

Many other stories they told, all about stealing beasts of burden, in which art they are masters. In short, they are a thoroughly bad people, and though many able magistrates have taken them in hand, they have always remained incorrigible.

After I had remained with them 20 days, they set out for Murcia in the southeast (about 30 miles north of Cartagena), taking me with them. We passed through Granada, where the company was quartered to which my master the drummer belonged. As the Roma were aware of this, they shut me up in the place where they were lodged. I overheard them talking about their journey, and thinking that no good would come of it, I contrived to give them the slip, left Granada, and entered the garden of a Christian Moor, who gladly received me.

BERGANZA’STIMEWITHTHECHRISTIANMOOR–ANDATHEATERTROUPE

I was quite willing to remain with him and watch his garden, – a much less fatiguing business in my opinion than guarding a flock of sheep. As there was no need to discuss wages, the Moor soon had a servant and I a master. I remained with him more than a month, not that the life I led with him was much to my liking, but because it gave me opportunities of observing that of my master, which was like that of all the other Christian Moors in Spain. Oh, what curious things I could tell you, Scipio, about that half-heathen rabble, if I were not afraid that I should not get to the end of my story in two weeks! If I were to go into particulars, two months would not be enough. But I’ll give you a few details.

Hardly will you find among the whole race one man who is a sincere believer in the holy law of Christianity. Their only thought is how to scrape up money and keep it. To this end, they toil incessantly and spend nothing. The moment a real falls into their clutches, they imprison it forever – so that by perpetually accumulating and never spending, they have got the greater part of the money of Spain into their hands. They are the grubs, the magpies, the weasels of the nation. Consider how numerous they are, and that every day they add much or little to their hoards, and that as they increase in number so the amount of their hoarded wealth must increase without end.

None of them make monastic vows, but all marry and multiply, for thrifty living promotes fertility. They are not laid low by war or overwork. They plunder quietly, and enrich themselves with the fruits of our inheritances, which they sell back to us. They have no servants, for they all wait upon themselves. They spend nothing on educating their sons, for all their lore is but how to rob us. From the 12 sons of Jacob who entered Egypt, as I have heard, there had sprung, when Moses freed them from captivity, 600,000 fighting men, plus women and children. From this we may infer how much the Christian Moors have multiplied, and how incomparably greater must be their numbers.


Scip. Means have been sought for remedying the mischief you have described. Indeed, I am sure that those that you have passed over in silence are even more serious than those you have mentioned. But our country has wise and zealous leaders, who will, with God’s help, provide a sure and prompt remedy for so great an evil. Go on.

Berg. My master being a stingy lunk, like all his kind, I lived chiefly on cornbread and porridge, as he did. But this poverty helped me to gain paradise, in the strange manner you shall hear. Every morning, by daybreak, a young man used to seat himself at the foot of one of the many pomegranate trees. He had the look of a student, being dressed in a rusty suit of threadbare wool, and was occupied in writing in a notebook, slapping his forehead from time to time, biting his nails, and gazing up at the sky. Sometimes he was so immersed in reverie, that he neither moved hand nor foot, nor even winked his eyes.

One day I heard him muttering between his teeth. At last, after a long silence, he cried out aloud, “Glorious! The best verse I ever composed in my life!” and down went something in his notebook. From all this, it was plain that the luckless creature was a poet. I approached him with my ordinary courtesies, and when I had convinced him of my gentleness, he let me lie down at his feet, and resumed the course of his thoughts, scratching his head, falling into ecstasies, and then writing as before.

Meanwhile, there came into the garden another young man, handsome and well dressed, with papers in his hand, which he glanced at from time to time. The newcomer walked up to the pomegranate tree, and said to the poet, “Have you finished the first act?”

“I have just this moment finished it in the best way possible,” was the reply. “How is that?” “Let me tell you! His Holiness the Pope comes forth in his pontifical vestments, with twelve

cardinals in purple canonical vestments – for the action of my comedy is supposed to take place at the season of changing of the hoods, when their eminences are not dressed in scarlet but in purple – therefore propriety absolutely requires that my cardinals should wear purple. This is an essential point, and one that more common writers would be sure to miss. But as for me, I could not go wrong, for I have read the whole Roman ceremony through, just so I could be exact as to the form of dress.”

“But where, do you suppose,” said the other, “will our manager find purple robes for twelve cardinals?”

“If a single one is omitted,” cried the poet, “I would as soon think of flying, as of letting my comedy be represented without it. Zounds! Is the public to miss that magnificent spectacle! Just imagine the splendid effect on the stage of a supreme Pontiff and twelve grave cardinals, with all the other dignitaries, who will, of course, accompany them! By heavens, it will be one of the grandest things ever seen on the stage!”

I now figured that one of these young men was a poet and the other a comedian. The latter advised the former that he should cut out a few of his cardinals if he did not want to make it impossible for the manager to produce the piece. The poet would not listen to this, but said they should be thankful that he had not brought in the whole conclave, to be present at the memorable event that he proposed to immortalize in his brilliant comedy.

The player laughed, left him to his occupation, and returned to his own, which was studying a part in a new play. The poet, after having committed to writing some verses of his magnificent comedy, slowly and gravely drew from his pocket some morsels of bread, and about 20 raisins, maybe less, for there were some crumbs of bread among them, which increased their apparent number. He blew the crumbs from the raisins, and ate them one by one, stems and all, for I did


not see him throw anything away, adding to them the pieces of bread, which had got such a color from the lining of his pocket, that they looked moldy, and were so hard that he could not get them down, though he chewed them over and over again.

This was lucky for me, for he threw them to me, saying, “Catch, dog, and much good may it do you.” Look, said I to myself, what nectar and ambrosia this poet gives me, for that is the food on which they say these sons of Apollo are nourished. In short, great for the most part is the poverty of poets. But greater was my need, since it obliged me to eat what he left.

As long as he was busy composing his comedy he did not fail to visit the garden, nor did I want for crusts, for he shared them with me liberally. Then we went to the well, where drank like monarchs, I lapping, and he drinking out of a pitcher. But at last the poet came no more, and my hunger became so intolerable, that I resolved to quit the Christian Moor and seek my fortune in the city.

As I entered it, I saw my poet coming out of the famous San Geronimo monastery. He came to me with open arms, and I was equally pleased to see him. He immediately began to empty his pockets of pieces of bread, softer than those he used to carry to the garden, and to put them between my teeth without passing them through his own. From the softness of the bits of bread, and my having seen my poet come out of the monastery, I surmised that his muse, like that of many of his brethren, was a bashful beggar. He walked into the city, and I followed him, intending to take him for my master if he would let me, thinking that the crumbs from his table might serve to support me, since there is no better or fuller purse than charity, whose liberal hands are never poor.

After some time, we arrived at the house of a theatrical manager, called Angelo the Bad (to distinguish him from another Angelo, not a manager but a player, one of the best ever seen). The whole company had gathered to hear my master’s comedy read. But before the first act was half finished, all had vanished, one by one, except the manager and I. The comedy was such that to me, who am but an ass in such matters, it seemed as though Satan himself had composed it for the poet’s utter ruin and damnation. I was sorely vexed to see how his audience had abandoned him. I wonder whether his prophetic soul foretold to him his impending disgrace. For soon, all the players – and there were more than a dozen – came back, laid hold of him, without saying a word, and, had it not been for the manager’s forceful interference, they would have tossed him in a blanket.

I was confounded by this sad turn of affairs, the manager was incensed, the players merry. The poor forlorn poet, with great patience, but a somewhat wry face, took the comedy, thrust it into his jacket, muttering, “It is not right to cast pearls before swine,” and sadly left the place in silence.

I was so mortified and ashamed that I could not follow him, and the manager caressed me so much that I was obliged to remain. Within a month, I became an excellent performer in interludes and pantomimes. Interludes usually end with a staged cudgeling bout. But in my master’s theater, they ended with siccing me on the characters of the piece, whom I worried and tumbled one over the other, to the huge delight of the ignorant spectators, and to my master’s great gain.

Oh, Scipio! What things I could tell you that I saw among these players, and two other companies I belonged to. But I must leave them for another day, for it would be impossible to tell them briefly. All you have heard is nothing to what I could relate to you about these people and their ways, their work and their idleness, their ignorance and their cleverness, and other matters without end.


Scip. I see clearly, Berganza, that the field is large. But leave it now, and go on.

BERGANZAARRIVESINVALLADOLID,ANDSERVESFRIARMAHUDES

Berg. I arrived with a company of players here in Valladolid, where they gave me a wound during an interlude fight scene that nearly killed me. I could not revenge myself then because I was muzzled, and I had no mind to do so afterward in cold blood – for deliberate vengeance bespeaks a cruel and malicious disposition. I grew tired of this work, not because it was laborious, but because I saw in it many unethical things. Because it was not in my power to remedy them, I resolved to see them no more, but to take refuge in an abode of holiness, as those do who forsake their vices when they can no longer practice them. Well, better late than never!

Then, seeing you one night carrying the lantern with that good Friar Mahudes, I noticed how content you were, how righteous and holy was your occupation. I longed to follow your steps. With that laudable intention, I placed myself before Mahudes, who immediately chose me as your companion, and brought me to this hospital. What has occurred to me since I have been here would take some time to relate. I will just mention a conversation I heard between four invalids, who lay in four beds next each other. It will not take long to tell, and it fits in here quite well.

Scip. Very well. But be quick, for, to the best of my belief, daylight must be near. Berg. The four beds were at the end of the infirmary, and in them lay an alchemist, a poet, a

mathematician, and one of those people called “promoters.” Scip. I remember these good people well. Berg. One afternoon last summer, the windows being closed, I lay panting under one of their

beds, when the poet began piteously to bewail his ill fortune. The mathematician asked him what was the matter.

“Have I not good cause to complain?” he replied. “I have strictly observed the rule that Horace laid down in his Art of Poetry, not to bring to light any work until 10 years after it has been composed. Now, I have a work on which I was engaged for 20 years, and which has lain by me for 12. The subject is sublime, the invention perfectly novel, the episodes singularly happy, the versifying noble, and the arrangement admirable, for the beginning corresponds perfectly with the middle and the end. Altogether, it is a lofty, sonorous, heroic poem, delectable and full of matter. Yet I can’t find a prince to whom I may dedicate it – a prince who is intelligent, liberal, and magnanimous. What a wretched and depraved age we live in!”

“What is the work about?” asked the alchemist. “It treats,” said the poet, “that part of the history of King Arthur of England that archbishop

Turpin left unwritten, together with the history of the quest for the Holy Grail, the whole in heroic measure – part rhymes, part blank verse, and in triplets – that is to say, in dactylic noun substantives, without any verbs.”

“Well, I am not much of a judge in matters of poetry,” replied the alchemist, “so I can’t precisely estimate the misfortune you complain of. But in any case, it can’t equal my own in wanting means, or a prince to back me and supply me with what I need for pursuing the science of alchemy, for which want alone I should now be rolling in gold, and richer than ever was Midas or Croesus.”

“Have you ever succeeded, Señor Alchemist,” said the mathematician, “in extracting gold from the other metals?”


“Well, not quite yet,” the alchemist replied, “but I know for certain that it can be done, and that in less than two months more I could complete the discovery of the philosopher’s stone, by means of which gold can be made even out of pebbles.”

“Your worships,” rejoined the mathematician, “have both made a great deal of your misfortunes. But after all, one of you has a book to dedicate, and the other is on the point of discovering the philosopher’s stone, by means of which he will be as rich as all those who have followed that course. But what will you say of my misfortune, which is great beyond compare? For 22 years I have been in pursuit of the fixed point. Here I miss it, there I get sight of it again, and just when it seems that I am down upon it so that it can by no means escape me, I find myself suddenly so far away from it that I am utterly amazed.

“It is just the same with the squaring the circle. I have been within such a hair’s breadth of it that I can’t conceive how it is that I have not got it in my pocket. Thus, I suffer a torment like that of Tantalus, who starves with fruits all round him, and burns with thirst with water at his lip. At one moment I seem to grasp the truth, at another it is far away from me – and, like Sisyphus, I begin again to climb the hill that I have just rolled down, along with all the mass of my labors.”

The promoter, who had kept silent, now jumped in. “Here we are,” he said, “four whiners, brought together by poverty under the roof of this hospital. To the devil with such callings and employments, as give neither pleasure nor bread to those who exercise them! I, gentlemen, am a promoter, and have at various times offered assorted valuable projects to his majesty, all to his advantage, and without prejudice to the realm.

“I have a memo in which I am asking his majesty to name someone to whom I may communicate my new project, which will enable him to completely liquidate all the kingdom’s debts. Based on the fate of all my prior memos, I expect that this one also will be thrown in the dustbin. But, lest you think me a crackpot, I will explain my project to you, though that will reveal my secret to an extent.

“I propose that all his majesty’s male subjects, from the age of 14 to 60, be required, once a month, on a certain appointed day, to fast on bread and water. And whatever they would otherwise spend that day for food, including fruit, meat, fish, wine, eggs, and vegetables, be turned into money, and the amount paid to his majesty, without defrauding him of a penny, as each shall declare on oath. In this way, within 20 years, the king will be free from all debts and encumbrances. It’s easy to calculate: Spain has more than three million men of the specified age, excluding invalids, and all of them spend at least a real and a half daily on food. But I am willing to put it at a real only. No one could spend less than that, even if they ate nothing but leeks.

“Now, does it not strike your worships that it would be no bad thing to realize every month three million reals, all net and clear as if they were winnowed and sifted? The plan, moreover, instead of a loss to his majesty’s subjects, would be a real advantage to them. For by means of their fasts they would make themselves acceptable to God, serve their king, and even improve their health. The project is obviously attractive in every way. The money too might be collected by parishes, without the cost of tax-gatherers and receivers – those bloodsuckers.”

The others all laughed at the promoter’s scheme, and even he himself joined in the laugh at last. I found much to reflect on in the strange conversation I had heard, and in the fact that people such as these usually end their days in a hospital.

Scip. That is true, Berganza. Have you anything more to say? Berg. Two things more, and then I will be done, for I think the day is beginning to dawn.

One day, I went with Friar Mahudes to ask for alms in the house of the magistrate of this city, who is both a great cavalier and a great Christian. We found him alone, and I thought it an apt


opportunity to give him certain counsel that I had heard from the lips of an old invalid in this hospital, who was discussing the means of saving from perdition those vagabond girls who take to a life of vice to avoid labor – an intolerable evil demanding an immediate and effective remedy. Wishing to tell the magistrate what I had heard, I lifted up my voice, thinking to speak. But instead of articulate speech, I barked so loudly that the magistrate called out passionately to his servants to drive me out of the room with sticks. Then one of them caught up a copper siphon, which was the nearest thing at hand, and thrashed me with it so, that I feel it in my ribs even now.

Scip. And do you complain of that, Berganza? Berg. Don’t I have reason to complain, since I feel the pain even now, and since my good

intentions did not deserve such punishment? Scip. Look, Berganza, no one should interfere where he is not wanted, nor take upon himself

a business that is not his concern. Besides, you ought to know, that the advice of the poor, however good it may be, is never taken. Nor should the lowly presume to offer advice to the great, who fancy they know everything. Wisdom in a poor man lies under a cloud, and can’t be seen – or if by chance it shines through it, people mistake it for folly, and treat it with contempt.

Berg. You are right, Scipio. Having had the lesson well beaten into me, I will act accordingly in the future. That same night I entered the house of a lady of quality, who had in her arms a little lapdog, so diminutive that she could have hidden it in her ample bosom. The instant it saw me, it flew at me out of its mistress’s arms, barking with all its might, and even went so far as to bite my leg. I looked at it with disgust, and said to myself, “If I met you in the street, paltry little beast, either I would take no notice of you at all, or I would make mincemeat of you.” The little wretch was an example of the common rule – that mean-souled persons, when they are in favor, are always insolent, and ready to offend those who are much better than themselves, though inferior to them in fortune.

Scip. We have many instances of this in worthless fellows, who are insolent enough under cover of their masters’ protection. But if death or any other chance brings down the tree against which they leaned, their true value becomes apparent, since they have no other merit than that borrowed from their patrons. Meanwhile, virtue and good sense are always the same, whether clothed or naked, alone or accompanied. But let us stop now, for the light beaming in through those chinks shows that the dawn is far advanced.

Berg. So be it. And I trust that tonight we shall find ourselves capable of resuming our conversation.

Peralta finished the reading of this dialog, and the Ensign his nap, both at the same time.

“Although this colloquy is obviously fictitious,” said his friend, “it is, in my opinion, so well composed that you should definitely continue with the second part.”

“Because you encourage me so, I will do that,” replied the Ensign, “without further debating with you whether the dogs spoke or not.”

“We don’t need to go over that ground again,” said his friend. “I admire the art and the invention you displayed in the dialog, and that is enough. Let us go to the promenade and recreate our physical eyes, just as we have gratified our minds’ eyes.”

“Gladly,” said the Ensign. And away they went.

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