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Life of Lazarillo de Tormes (Markham translation)

<h3>SECOND MASTER</h3> HOW LAZARO TOOK SERVICE WITH A CLERGYMAN, AND OF THE THINGS THAT HAPPENED TO HIM. </div> Next day, The clergyman’s chest. as I did not feel that I should be quite safe at Torrijos,[21] I stopped at a place called Maqueda,[22] where for my sins I took service with a clergyman. Going to him to ask for alms, he inquired[p. 31] whether I knew how to assist at Mass. I said yes, which was true, for though the blind man ill-treated me, he taught me many useful things, and one of them was this. Finally the clergyman took me as his servant. Out of the frying-pan into the fire.I had escaped from the thunder to fall under the lightning. For compared with this priest, the blind man was an Alexander the Great. I will say no more than that all the avarice in the world was combined in this man, but I know not whether it was naturally born in him or whether it was put on with the priestly habit. He had an old chest closed with a key which he carried with him, fastened to the belt of his gown. When he brought the “bodigos”[23] from the church, they were quickly locked up in the chest, and there was nothing to eat in the house such as is to be seen in other houses, a piece of bacon, some bits of cheese on a shelf or in a cupboard, or a few pieces of bread that may have remained over from the table. It seemed to me that the sight of such things, even if I could not have them, would have been a consolation. Nothing in the clergyman’s house but an old chest, and a string of onions.There was only a string of onions, and these[p. 32] were under lock and key in an upper chamber, one being allowed for every four days. If I asked for the key, to fetch the allowance, and any one else was present, he put his hand in his pocket, and gave it to me with great ceremony, telling me to take it and return at once without taking anything else; as if all the conserves of Valencia were there. Yet there was not a thing in the room but the onions hanging from a nail, and he kept such a strict account of them, that if I ever took more than my allowance it cost me dear. At last I was near dead with hunger. If he showed little charity to me, he treated himself as badly. Small bits of meat formed his usual food for dinner and supper. It is true that he shared the gravy with me, but nothing more except a small piece of bread. On Saturdays they eat sheep’s head in those parts, and my master sent me for one that was to cost three maravedis. He cooked it and ate all the eyes, tongue, brains, and the meat off the cheeks, giving me the well-picked bone on a plate, and saying, “Take! Eat! Triumph! for you is the world, and you live better than the Pope.” Lazaro was sinking into the silent tomb from hunger.At the end of three weeks I became so weak that I could scarcely stand on my feet for hunger. I saw myself[p. 33] sinking down into the silent tomb. If God and my own intelligence had not enabled me to avail myself of ingenious tricks, there would have been no remedy for me. Extraordinary stinginess of the clergyman.When we were at the offertory not a single blanca was dropped into the shell without being registered by him. He kept one eye on the congregation and the other on my hands, moving his eyes about as if they were quicksilver. He knew exactly how many blancas had been given, and as soon as the offertory was over, he took the shell from me and put it on the altar. During all the time I lived, or rather was dying in his service, I never was master of a single blanca. I never brought a blanca worth of wine from a tavern, but it was put into his chest to last for a week. To conceal his extreme stinginess he said to me, “Look here, boy! Priests have to be very frugal in eating and drinking, and for this reason I do not feed like other people.” But he lied shamefully. For at meetings and funerals where we had to say prayers and responses, and where he could get food at the expense of others, he ate like a wolf and drank more than a proposer of toasts. Lazaro prayed for the deaths of sick people, for the sake of the funeral feasts.And why do I speak of funerals? God[p. 34] forgive me! for I never was an enemy to the human race except on those occasions. Then we could eat well, and I wished, and even prayed to God that He would kill some one every day. When we gave the Sacraments to the sick, especially extreme unction, the priest was called upon to say prayers for those who were present. I was certainly not the last in prayer, for with all my heart I besought the Lord that He would take the sick man to Himself. If any one recovered I devoted him to the devil a thousand times. He who died received many benedictions from me, yet the number of persons who died during the whole time I was there, which was over six months, only amounted to twenty. I verily believed that I killed them, or rather that they died in answer to my prayers, the Lord seeing how near death I was, and that their deaths gave me life. But there was no remedy, for if on the days of the funerals I lived, on the days when no one died I was starving, and I felt it all the more. So that there seemed to be no rest for me but in death; and I often desired it for myself, as well as for others. I frequently thought of leaving my penuri[p. 35]ous master, but two things detained me. The first was that I feared my legs would not carry me, so reduced was I by starvation. The other was the consideration that I had had two masters. The first starved me, the second brought me to death’s door, and a third might finish me. It appeared that any change might be for the worse. Lazaro is saved from starvation by an angel of a locksmith.One day when my wretched master was out, a locksmith came to the door by chance. I thought that he was an angel sent to me by the hand of God, in the dress of a workman. He asked me whether I had any work for him to do. Inspired by the Holy Spirit I replied: “Uncle! I have lost a key, and I fear that my master will whip me. Kindly see if there are any on your bunch that will fit the lock, and I will pay you for it.” The chest opened. The angelic locksmith began to try his keys, and soon the chest was opened, and I beheld the Lord’s gift in the form of bread. “I have no money,” I said, “to give you for the key, but take what you like in payment.” He took one of the loaves that looked the best, and went away quite satisfied, leaving the key with me. Lazaro is happy until the clergyman begins to smell a rat.I did not touch anything, at the moment, because I did not feel the need. My wretched master came back, and, as God willed[p. 36] it, he did not look into the trunk which that angel had opened. But next day, when he had gone out, I opened my bread paradise and took a loaf between the hands and teeth. In two credos I made it invisible. Not forgetting the open chest, I rejoiced to think that, with this remedy, my life would be less miserable. Thus I was happy with him for two days, but it was not destined that this should continue. The clergyman counts the loaves of bread.For on the third day, at the very time that I was dying of hunger, he was to be seen at our chest, counting and recounting the loaves. I dissimulated, and, in my secret prayers and devotions, I implored that he might be blinded. After he had been counting for a long time, he said: “If I did not keep such an exact account I should think that some loaves have been taken from this chest. From this day I shall have a more accurate account. There are now nine loaves and part of another.” “New misfortunes have come,” I said to myself, and I felt that my stomach would soon be in the same wretched state as before. When the priest went out, I opened the chest as some consolation, and when I saw the bread I began to worship it, giving it a thousand kisses. But I did not pass that day[p. 37] so happily as the day before. As my hunger increased, so did my longing for more bread. At length God, who helps the afflicted, showed me a remedy. I said to myself: “This chest is old, and broken in some parts, though the holes are very small. The belief might be suggested that rats had got through these holes and had eaten some of the bread.” It would not do to eat wholesale, but I began to crumble the bread over some not very valuable cloth, taking some and leaving some, and thus I got a meal. When the priest came to examine the damage, he did not doubt that it had been done by the rats, because it seemed to be done just in the way that rats would do it. He looked over the chest from one end to the other, and saw the holes by which the rats might have entered. He then called to me and said: “Lazaro, look! Look what damage has been done to our bread last night!” I appeared to be much astonished, and wondered how it could have happened. It was the rats.“It is the rats,” he declared, “they would leave us nothing.” We went to our meal, and even there it pleased God that I should come off well; for he gave me more than usual, including all the parts he thought the rats had touched, saying: “Eat[p. 38] this which the rat has cleaned.” Thus the work of my hands, or rather nails, was added to my allowance. The clergyman boards up all the rat holes in the old chest.Presently I beheld another piece of work. The wretched priest was pulling nails out of the wall, and looking for small boards with which to cover all the holes in the ancient chest. “O Lord!” I then said to myself, “to what miseries and disasters are we born, and how brief are our pleasures in this our toilsome life! I thought that by this poor little contrivance I might find a way to pass out of my misery, and I even ventured to rejoice at my good-fortune, and now my ill-luck has returned.” Using all the diligence in his power, for misers as a rule are not wanting in that commodity, he shut the door of my consolation while he boarded up the holes in the chest. Thus I made my lamentation, as an end was made to the work, with many small boards and nails. “Now,” said the priest, “the traitor rats will find little in this house, and had better leave us, for there is not a hole left large enough for a mosquito to get in.” <div class="figcenter mt2" id="p039"> [p. 39] <ANTIMG src="images/pb039.jpg" alt="Illustration" /> <img src="images/xpnd.jpg" alt="Enlarge" title="Enlarge" />  “‘It is the rats,’ he declared.” </div> When he was gone I opened the chest with my key without any hope of profit from doing so. There were the three or four loaves [p. 41]which my master thought the rats had not begun upon. Night and day I thought of some other plan, with the help of my hunger, for they say that it is an aid to invention. It certainly was so with me. One night I was deep in thought, meditating how I might use the contents of the chest again. My master was snoring loudly, so I took an old knife and went to the chest. I used the knife in the way of a gimlet, and as the ancient piece of furniture was without strength or heart, it soon surrendered, and allowed me to make a nice hole. This done I opened the chest, had a good meal, and went back to my straw bed, where I rested and slept. Next day my master saw both the hole and the damage done to his provisions. He began to commend the rats to the devil, saying, “What shall we say to this! Never have I known rats in this house until now.” He may well have spoken the truth, for such creatures do not stay where there is nothing to eat. What the clergyman did by day, Lazaro undid by night. He turned to find more nails in the wall, and a small board to cover the hole. Night came and he retired to rest, while I set to work to open by night what he had closed up in the day. It was like the weaving of Penelope, for all he did by day I undid by night. In a few days we got[p. 42] the poor old chest into such a state, that it might be described as a sieve of old time rather than a chest. When the miserly priest saw that his remedies were of no use he said: “This chest is so knocked about, and the wood is so old and weak that there is not a rat against which it can be defended. We will leave it without defence outside, and I will go to the cost of three or four reals. As the best outside guard is no use, I will attack these cursed rats from the inside.” He presently borrowed a rat-trap, and begged some pieces of cheese from the neighbours. This was a great help to me. In truth I did not need much sauce for my bread, still, I enjoyed the bits of cheese which I got from the rat-trap. The rat-trap adds cheese to Lazaro’s bread.When he found the bread eaten in rat’s fashion, the cheese gone, and no rats caught, he again commended the rats to the devil. He asked the neighbours how the cheese could have been taken without the rat being caught. They agreed that it could not have been a rat. One neighbour remembered that there used to be a snake in the house, and they all concurred that it must have been the snake. It must have been a snake.As it is long it could have taken the cheese without being caught in the trap. This exercised the[p. 43] mind of my master very much, and from that time he slept so lightly that the slightest sound made him think that the snake was going into the chest. Then he would jump up and give the chest many violent blows with a stick, intending to frighten the snake. The noise used to awaken the neighbours, while I could not sleep. He rolled about my straw, and me with it, because the neighbours said that snakes liked to keep warm in the straw, or in cradles where there are babies, where they even bit them and were dangerous. I generally went to sleep again, and he told me about it in the morning, saying: “Did you feel nothing last night, my boy? I was after the snake, and I even think it came to your bed, for when snakes are cold they seek for warmth.” I replied, “It was lucky it did not bite me, but I am terribly frightened.” I did not get up or go to the chest at night, but waited until my master was in church. He used to see the inroads on his bread, but knew not how to apply a remedy. I began to be afraid that, with all my diligence, he might find my key which I kept amongst the straw. I thought it would be safer to put it in my mouth. Lazaro determined to keep the key in his mouth—a fatal mistake.For when I lived with the blind man I used my mouth[p. 44] as a purse, keeping ten or twelve maravedis in it, all in half blancas, without being prevented from eating. Without that plan I could not have kept a blanca from the knowledge of the cursed blind man, for I had not a seam or a lining which he did not examine very minutely. So, as I have said, I put the key in my mouth every night, and slept without fear that my wizard of a master would find it. But when misfortune comes, wit and diligence are of no avail. It chanced, owing to ill-luck, or rather owing to my sins, that I was sleeping one night with the key in my mouth in such a position that the air went out of the hollow in the key and caused it to whistle so that, for my sins, my master heard it. So he got up with the club in his hand, and came to me very quietly that the snake might not hear, for he felt no doubt that it was the snake. He thought that it was in the straw, and he raised the club with the intention of giving it such a blow as to kill it. So he hit me on the head with all his force and left me senseless. Lazaro is found out, and half killed in the process.Seeing the quantity of blood he understood the harm he had done me, and went in a great hurry to get a light. Coming back he found me with the key in my mouth, half of it[p. 45] projecting, in the same way as it was when I was whistling with it. The killer of snakes was astounded that it should have been the key. He took it out of my mouth to see what it was. Then he went to try it in the lock, and found out my practices. He said that the rats and the snake that devoured his substance were found. What happened in the next three days I know not, for I was in the belly of the whale. At the end of that time my senses returned. I found myself lying on my straw, and my head covered with unguents and plasters. I was astounded and said: “What is this?” The cruel priest answered that he had caught the rats and the serpent. Finding myself so evilly treated, I began to understand what had happened. At this time an old woman came in and dressed my wound. Then the neighbours began to take off the bandages. They rejoiced when they saw that I had recovered my senses, and began to laugh over my misfortunes while I, as the sinner, mourned over them. Lazaro recovers and is shown the door.With all this they gave me something to eat, so that in a fortnight I could get up and was out of danger, though suffering from hunger. On another day, when I was up, my master took me by the hand and put me outside the door.[p. 46] Being in the street, he said: “From to-day, Lazaro, you are your own master and not my servant. Seek another master, and go, in God’s name; for I do not want such a diligent person in my service, who is only fit to be a blind man’s guide.” He then crossed himself as if he thought I had a devil, went back into the house, and shut the door. <div class="figcenter mt2" id="p046"> <ANTIMG src="images/pb046.jpg" alt="Illustration" /></div> <hr class="chap0" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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