The Life of Lazarillo of Tormes, Parts One and Two

R >> Robert Rudder >> The Life of Lazarillo of Tormes, Parts One and Two

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"He quickly went after me, but it did no good because he went
east and we were running to the west.

"Before we left Madrid we exchanged my clothes for these, and
they gave me two hundred pieces of silver besides. I sold the
diamond band for four hundred gold pieces. And when we got here
I gave these gentlemen two hundred, as Canil had promised them.
That's the story of how I was set free, and if Mr. Lazaro wants
anything else, let him ask. We will do for him whatever the
gentleman desires."

I thanked her for the courtesy, and as best I could I took my
leave of them all. The good old man walked with me for a few
miles. As we were walking along I asked him if those people were
all gypsies born in Egypt. He told me there wasn't a damned one
from Egypt in Spain: all of them there were really priests,
friars, nuns, or thieves who had escaped from jail or from their
convents. But the biggest scoundrels of all were the ones who
had left their monasteries, exchanging the contemplative life for
the active one. The old man went back to his camp, while I rode
to Valladolid on the shank's mare.

XII. What Happened to Lazaro in an Inn Three Miles outside of
Valladolid

What thoughts I had all along the road about my good gypsies:
their way of life, their customs, the way they behaved. It
really amazed me that the law let such thieves go around so
freely, since everyone knows that their life involves nothing
but stealing. Theirs is an asylum--a shelter for thieves, a
congregation of apostates,
and a school for evil. I was especially astonished that friars
would leave a life of rumination to follow the one of ruination
and fatigue of the gypsies. I wouldn't have believed what the
gypsy told me if he hadn't shown me a gypsy man and woman a mile
from the camp, behind the walls of a shelter: he was broad-
shouldered, and she was plump. He wasn't sunburned, and she
wasn't tanned by harsh weather. One of them was singing a verse
from the psalms of David, and the other was answering with
another verse. The good old man told me that they were a friar
and a nun who had come to his congregation not more than a week
ago, wanting to profess a more austere life.

I came to an inn three miles from Valladolid, and I saw the old
lady from Madrid, along with the young maiden of yore, sitting in
the doorway. A gallant young fellow came out to call them in to
eat. They didn't recognize me because of my good disguise: my
patch still over one eye and my clothes worn in the roguish
style. But I knew I was the Lazaro who had come out of the tomb
that had been so harsh on me. I went up to them to see if they
would give me anything. But they couldn't because they didn't
have anything for themselves. The young man who served as their
steward was so generous that, for himself, his sweetheart, and
the old bawd, he'd had a tiny bit of pork liver prepared with a
sauce. I could have shoveled down everything on the plate in
less than two mouthfuls. The bread was as black as the
tablecloth, and that looked like a penitent's tunic or a rag for
cleaning stoves.

"Eat, my dove," the gentleman said. "This meal is fit for a
prince."

The go-between ate without a word so as not to lose any time and
because she saw there wasn't enough for all of them. They began
to clean up the plate with such gusto that they removed the
finish. When the poor, sad meal was over--and it had made them
more hungry than full--the gentle lover made excuses by saying
the inn didn't have much food.

When I saw they didn't have anything for me, I asked the
innkeeper what there was to eat. He told me, "It depends how
much you want to pay." He wanted to give me a few chitterlings.
I asked him if he had anything else. He offered me a quarter of
kid that the lover hadn't wanted because it was too expensive. I
wanted to impress them, so I told him to give it to me. I sat
down with it at the end of the table, and their stares were a
sight to behold. With each mouthful I swallowed six eyes,
because those of the lover, the girl, and the bawd were fastened
on what I was eating.

"What's going on?" asked the maiden. "That poor man is eating a
quarter of kid, and there was nothing for us but a poor piece of
fried liver."

The young fellow answered that he had asked the innkeeper for
some partridges, capons or hens, and that he had told him he
didn't have anything else to offer. I knew the truth of the
matter--that he had put them on that diet because he didn't want
to pay or couldn't, but I decided to eat and keep quiet. The kid
was like a magnet. Without warning, I found all three of them
hovering over my plate.

The brazen-faced little bitch picked up a piece and said, "With
your permission, brother." But before she had it, she had the
piece in her mouth.

The old woman said, "Don't steal his meal from this poor sinner."

"I'm not stealing it," she answered. "I intend to pay him for it
very well."

And in the same breath she began to eat so fast and furiously
that it looked like she hadn't eaten in six days. The old woman
took a bite to see how it tasted.

"Is it really that good?" said the young man. And he filled his
mouth with an enormous piece. When I saw that they were going
too far, I picked up everything on the plate and stuck it in my
mouth. It was so big that it couldn't go down or up.

While I was in this struggle, two armed men came riding up to the
door of the inn, wearing vests and helmets and carrying shields.
Each of them had one musket at his side and another on the
saddle. They dismounted and gave their mules to a foot servant.
They asked the innkeeper if there was anything to eat. He told
them he had a good supply of food, and if they liked they could
go into the hall while he was preparing it. The old woman had
gone over to the door when she heard the noise, and she came back
with her hands over her face, bowing as much as a novice monk.
She spoke with a wee, tiny voice and was laboriously twisting
back and forth like she was going into labor.

As softly and well as she could, she said, "We're lost. Clara's
brothers (Clara was the maiden's name) are outside."

The girl began to pull and tear at her hair, hitting herself so
hard it was like she was possessed. The young man was
courageous, and he consoled her, telling her not to worry, that
he could handle everything. I was all ears, with my mouth full
of kid, and when I heard that those braggers were there I thought
I was going to die of fear. And I would have, too, but since my
gullet was closed off, my soul didn't find the door standing
open, and it went back down.

The two Cids came in, and as soon as they saw their sister and
the bawd they shouted, "Here they are! At last we have them.
Now they'll die!"

I was so frightened by their shouts that I fell to the floor, and
when I hit I ejected the goat that was choking me. The two women
got behind the young man like chicks under a hen's wing running
from a hawk. Brave and graceful, he pulled out his sword and
went at the brothers so furiously that their fright turned them
into statues. The words froze in their mouths, and the swords in
their sheaths. The young man asked them what they wanted or what
they were looking for, and as he was talking he grabbed one of
them and took away his sword. Then he pointed this sword at his
eyes, while he held his own sword at the other one's eyes. At
every movement he made with the swords, they trembled like
leaves. When the old woman and the sister saw the two Rolands so
subdued, they went up and disarmed them. The innkeeper came in
at the noise we were all making (I had gotten up and had one of
them by the beard).

It all seemed to me like the gentle bulls in my town: boys, when
they see them, run away; but they gradually get more and more
daring, and when they see they aren't as fierce as they look,
they lose all their fear and go right up and throw all kinds of
garbage on them. When I saw that those scarecrows weren't as
ferocious as they looked, I plucked up my courage and attacked
them more bravely than my earlier terror had allowed.

"What's this?" asked the innkeeper. "Who dares to cause such an
uproar in my house?"

The women, the gentleman, and I began shouting that they were
thieves who had been following us to rob us. When the innkeeper
saw them without any weapons, and at our mercy, he said, "Thieves
in my house!"

He grabbed hold of them and helped us put them in a
cellar, not listening to one word of their protests. Their
servant came back from feeding the mules, and he asked where his
masters were: the innkeeper put him in with them. He took their
bags, their saddle cushions, and their portmanteaus and locked
them up, and he gave us the weapons as if they belonged to him.
He didn't charge us for the food so that we would sign a lawsuit
he had drawn up against them.

He said he was a minister of the Inquisition, and as a law
officer in that district, he was condemning the three of them to
the galleys for the rest of their lives, and to be whipped two
hundred times around the inn. They appealed to the Chancery of
Valladolid, and the good innkeeper and three of his servants took
them there.

When the poor fellows thought they were before the judges, they
found themselves before the Inquisitors, because the sly
innkeeper had put down on the record some words they had spoken
against the officials of the Holy Inquisition (an unpardonable
crime). They put the brothers in dark jail cells, and they
couldn't write their father or ask anyone to help them the way
they had thought they could.

And there we will leave them, well guarded, to get back to our
innkeeper, because we met him on the road. He told us that the
Inquisitors had commanded him to have the witnesses who had
signed the lawsuit appear before them. But, as a friend, he was
advising us to go into hiding. The young maiden gave him a ring
from her finger, begging him to arrange things so we wouldn't
have to appear. He promised he would. But the thief said this
to make us leave, so that if they wanted to hear witnesses they
wouldn't discover his chicanery (and it wasn't his first).

In two weeks Valladolid was the scene of an _auto de fe_, and I
saw the three poor devils come out with other penitents, with
gags in their mouths, as blasphemers who had dared speak against
the ministers of the Holy Inquisition--a group of people as
saintly and perfect as the justice they deal out. All three of
them were wearing pointed hats and sanbenitos, and written on
them were their crimes and the sentences they had been given. I
was sorry to see that poor foot servant paying for something he
hadn't done. But I didn't feel as much pity for the other two
because they'd had so little on me. The innkeeper's sentence was
carried out, with the addition of three hundred lashes apiece, so
they were given five hundred and sent to the galleys where their
fierce bravado melted away.

I sought out my fortune. Many times, on the street of Magdalena,
I ran into my two women friends. But they never recognized me or
were aware that I knew them. After a few days I saw the
missionary-minded young maiden in the prisoners' cells where she
earned enough to maintain her affair and herself. The old woman
carried on her business in that city.

XIII. How Lazaro Was a Squire for Seven Women at One Time

I reached Valladolid with six silver pieces in my purse because
the people who saw me looking so skinny and pale gave me money
with open hands, and I didn't take it with closed ones. I went
straight to the clothing store, and for four silver coins and a
twenty-copper piece I bought a long baize cloak, worn out, torn
and unraveled, that had belonged to a Portuguese. With that, and
a high, wide-brimmed hat like a Franciscan monk's that I bought
for half a silver piece, and with a cane in my hand, I took a
stroll around.

People who saw me mocked me. Everyone had a different name for
me. Some of them called me a tavern philosopher. Others said,
"There goes Saint Peter, all dressed up for his feast day."

And still others: "Oh, Mr. Portugee, would you like some polish
for your boots?"

And somebody even said I must be a quack doctor's ghost. I
closed my ears like a shopkeeper and walked right past.

After I had gone down a few streets I came upon a woman dressed
in a full skirt, with very elegant shoes. She also had on a silk
veil that came down to her bosom and had her hand on a little
boy's head. She asked me if I knew of any squires around there.
I answered that I was the only one I knew of and that if she
liked she could use me as her own. It was all arranged in the
twinkling of an eye. She promised me sixty coppers for my meals
and wages. I took the job and offered her my arm. I threw away
the cane because I didn't need it anymore, and I was only using
it to appear sickly and move people to pity. She sent the child
home, telling him to have the maid set the table and get dinner
ready. For more than two hours she took me from pillar to post,
up one street and down another.

The lady told me that when she got to the first house we were
going to stop at, I was to go up to the house first and ask for
the master or mistress of the house, and say, "My lady, Juana
Perez (that was her name), is here and would like to pay her
respects."

She also told me that whenever I was with her and she stopped
anywhere, I was always to take off my hat. I told her I knew
what a servant's duties were, and I would carry them out.

I really wanted to see my new mistress's face, but she kept her
veil over it, and I couldn't. She told me she wouldn't be able
to keep me by herself but that she would arrange for some ladies
who were neighbors of hers to use me, and between them they would
give me the money she had promised. And meanwhile, until they
all agreed--which wouldn't take long--she would give me her
share. She asked me if I
had a place to sleep. I told her I didn't.

"I'll get you one," she said. "My husband is a tailor, and you
can sleep with his apprentices. You couldn't find a better-
paying job in the whole city," she continued, "because in three
days you'll have six ladies, and each of them will give you ten
coppers."

I was nearly dumbstruck to see the pomposity of that woman who
appeared to be, at the very least, the wife of a privileged
gentleman or of some wealthy citizen. I was also astonished to
see that I would have to serve seven mistresses to earn seventy
poor coppers a day. But I thought that anything was better than
nothing, and it wasn't hard work. That was something I fled from
like the Devil, because I was always more for eating cabbage and
garlic without working than for working to eat capons and hens.

When we came to her house, she gave me the veil and the shoes to
give to the maid, and I saw what I was longing for. The young
woman didn't look bad at all to me: she was a sprightly brunette,
with a nice figure. The only thing I didn't like was that her
face gleamed like a glazed earthen pot.

She gave me the ten coppers and told me to come back
two times every day--at eight in the morning and three in the
afternoon--to see if she
wanted to go out. I went to a pastry shop, and with a ten-copper
piece of pie I put an end to my day's wages. I spent the rest of
the day like a chameleon because I had spent the money I'd begged
along the road. I didn't dare go begging anymore because if my
mistress heard about it she would eat me alive.

I went to her house at three o'clock; she told me she didn't want
to go out, but she warned me that from then on she wouldn't pay
me on the days she didn't go out, and that if she only went out
once a day she would give me five coppers and no more. But she
said that since she was giving me a place to sleep, she expected
to be served before all the others, and she wanted me to call
myself her servant. For the sort of bed it was, she deserved
that and even more. She made me sleep with the apprentices on a
large table without a damned thing to cover us but a worn-out
blanket.

I spent two days on the miserable food that I could
afford with ten coppers. Then the wife of a tanner joined the
fraternity, and she haggled over the ten coppers for more than an
hour. Finally, after five days, I had seven mistresses, and my
wages were seventy coppers. I began to eat splendidly: the wine
I drank wasn't the worst, but it wasn't the best either (I didn't
want to overreach my hand and have it lopped off). The five
other women were the wife of a constable, a gardener's wife, the
niece (or so she said) of a chaplain in the Discalced order, a
goodlooking, sprightly girl, and a tripe merchant. This last
woman I liked best because whenever she gave me the ten coppers
she invited me to have some tripe soup, and before I left her
house I would have guzzled down three or four bowlsful.

So I was living as content as could be. The last mistress was a
devout woman: I had more to do with her than with the others
because all she ever did was visit with friars, and when she was
alone with them she was in her glory. Her house was like a
beehive: some coming, others going, and they all came with their
sleeves stuffed with things for her. For me, so I would be a
faithful secretary, they brought some pieces of meat from their
meals, which they put in their sleeves. I have never in my life
seen a more hypocritical woman than she was. When she walked
down the street she never took her eyes off the ground; her
rosary was always in her hand, and she would always be praying on
it in the streets. Every woman who knew her begged her to pray
to God for them since her prayers were so acceptable to Him. She
told them she was a great sinner (and that was no lie), but she
was lying with the truth.

Each of my mistresses had her own special time for me to come.
When one of them said she didn't want to go out, I went to the
next one's house, until I finished my rounds. They told me what
time to come back for them and without fail, because if I (sinner
that I am) was even a little bit late, the lady would insult me
in front of everyone she visited, and she would threaten me,
saying that if I kept being so careless she would get another
squire who was more diligent, careful, and punctual. Anyone
hearing her shout and threaten me so haughtily undoubtedly
thought she was paying me two pieces of silver every day and a
salary of three hundred silver pieces a year besides. When my
mistresses walked down the street each one looked like the wife
of the judge over all Castile, or at least, of a judge of the
Chancery.

One day it happened that the chaplain's niece and the
constable's wife met in a church, and both of them wanted to go
home at the same time. The quarrel about which one I would take
home first was so loud that it was as though we were in jail.
They grabbed hold of me and pulled--one at one side and one at
the other--so fiercely that they tore my cloak to shreds. And
there I stood, stark naked, because I didn't have a damned thing
under it but some ragged underwear that looked like a fish net.
The people who saw the fish hook peeping out from the torn
underwear laughed their heads off. The church was like a tavern:
some were making fun of poor Lazaro; others were listening to the
two women dig up their grandparents. I was in such a hurry to
gather up the pieces of my cloak that had fallen in their
ripeness that I didn't get a chance to listen to what they were
saying. I only heard the widow say, 'Where does this whore get
all her pride? Yesterday she was a water girl, and today she
wears taffeta dresses at the expense of the souls in purgatory.

The other woman answered, "This one, the old gossip, got her
black frocks at bargain prices from those who pay with a _Deo
Gratias_, or a 'be charitable in God's name.' And if I was a
water girl yesterday, she's a hot-air merchant today."

The people there separated the women because they had begun to
pull each other's hair. I finished picking up the pieces of my
poor cloak, and I asked a devout woman there for two pins. Then
I fixed it as well as I could and covered up my private parts.

I left them quarreling and went to the tailor's wife's house.
She had told me to be there at eleven because she had to go to
dinner at a friend's house. When she saw how ragged I looked,
she shouted at me, "Do you think you're going to earn my money
and escort me like a picaro? I could have another squire with
stylish trousers, breeches, a cape and hat, for less than I pay
you. And you're always getting drunk on what I give you."

What do you mean, getting drunk? I thought to myself. With
seventy coppers that I make a day, at most? And many days my
mistresses don't even leave their houses just so that they won't
have to pay me a cent. The tailor's wife had them stitch
together the pieces of my cloak, and they were in such a hurry
that they put some of the pieces on top that belonged on the
bottom. And that's the way I went with her.

XIV. Where Lazaro Tells What Happened to Him at a Dinner

We went flying along like a friar who has been invited out to
dinner because the lady was afraid there wouldn't be enough left
for her. We reached her friend's house, and inside were other
women who had been invited, too. They asked my mistress if I
would be able to guard the door; she told them I could. They
said to me, "Stay here, brother. Today you'll eat like a king."

Many gallant young men came, each one pulling something out of
his pocket: this one a partridge, that one a hen; one took out a
rabbit, another one a couple of pigeons; this one a little
mutton, that one a piece of loin; and someone brought out sausage
or blackpudding. One of them even took out a pie worth a silver
piece, wrapped up in his handkerchief. They gave it to the cook,
and in the meantime they were frolicking around with the ladies,
romping with them like donkeys in a new field of rye. It isn't
right for me to tell what happened there or for the reader to
even imagine it.

After these rituals there came the victuals. The ladies ate the
_Aves_, and the young men drank the _ite misa est_. Everything
left on the table the ladies wrapped in their handkerchiefs and
put in their pockets. Then the men pulled the dessert out of
theirs: some, apples; others, cheese; some, olives; and one of
them, who was the cock of the walk and the one who was fooling
with the tailor's wife, brought out a half-pound of candied
fruit. I really liked that way of keeping your meal so close,
in case you need it. And I decided right then that I would put
three or four pockets on the first pair of pants God would give
me, and one of them would be of good leather, sewn up well enough
to pour soup into. Because if those gentlemen who were so rich
and important brought everything in their pockets and the ladies
carried things that were cooked in theirs, I--who was only a
whore's squire--could do
it, too.

We servants went to eat, and there wasn't a damned thing left for
us but soup and bread sops, and I was amazed to see that those
ladies hadn't stuck that up their sleeves. We had barely begun
when we heard a tremendous uproar in the hall where our masters
were: they were referring to their mothers and discussing what
sort of men their fathers had been. They left off talking and
started swinging, and since variety is necessary in everything,
there was hitting, slapping, pinching, kicking, and biting. They
were grabbing one another's hair and pulling it out; they pounded
each other so much you would think they were village boys in a
religious procession.

As far as I could find out, the quarrel broke out because some of
the men didn't want to give or pay those women anything: they
said that what the women had eaten was enough.

It happened that some law officers were coming up the street, and
they heard the noise and knocked on the door and called out,
"Open up, in the name of the law!"

When they heard this, some of the people inside ran one way, and
others another way. Some left behind their cloaks, and others
their swords, one left her shoes, another her veil. So they all
disappeared, and each one hid as best he could. I had no reason
to run away, so I stood there, and since I was the doorman, I
opened the door so they wouldn't accuse me of resisting the law.
The first officer who came in grabbed me by the collar and said I
was under arrest. When they had me in their hands, they locked
the door and went looking for the people who had been making all
the noise. There was no bedroom, dressing room, basement, wine
cellar, attic, or privy they didn't look in.

Since the officers didn't find anyone, they took my statement. I
confessed from A to Z about everyone at the gathering and what
they had done. The officers were amazed, since there were as
many as I'd said, that not one of them had turned up. To tell
the truth, I was amazed, too, because there had been twelve men
and six women. Simple as I was, I told them (and I really
believed it) that I thought all the people who had been there and
made that noise were goblins. They laughed at me, and the
constable asked his men who had been to the wine cellar if they'd
looked everywhere carefully. They said they had, but not
satisfied with this, he made them light a torch, and when they
went in the door they saw a cask rolling around. The officers
were terrified, and they started to run away, crying, "For God's
sake, that fellow was right; there are nothing but spooks here!"

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