Episode 3

O great God! Would that I had been buried at that hour, for dead I was already! Such was the fury of the perverse blind man that, had not people run up at the noise, I verily believe he would not have left me alive. They tore me from his hands, leaving them full of those few hairs I had left, my face all scratched, and my neck and throat clawed; and this I well deserved, since through my own mischief so many persecutions came upon me.

The wicked blind man recounted my disasters to all who flocked thither, telling them again and again the tale of the wine jug, and of the grapes, and now of this present adventure. So great was the laughter of all that everyone passing in the street came in to see the spectacle; yet with such grace and pleasantry did the blind man relate my exploits that, bruised and weeping though I was, methought I did him wrong in not laughing with the rest.

And while all this was passing, there came to my mind a piece of cowardice and slackness I had committed, wherefor I cursed myself: and that was my not having bitten off his nose, seeing I had so fair an opportunity and half the journey was already done; for merely by clenching my teeth it would have remained in my keeping, and being belonging to such a villain, my stomach perchance would have held it better than it held the sausage; and with the nose missing, I might have denied the theft. Would to God I had done it, for it would have been all one in the end! The hostess and those present made us friends, and with the very wine I had brought him to drink, they washed my face and throat; whereon the wicked blind man made merry jests, saying:

“In good truth, this boy costs me more wine in washings at the year’s end than I drink myself in two. At least, Lázaro, thou owest more to wine than to thy father: for he begat thee but once, but wine hath given thee life a thousand times!”

And straightway he would recount how many times he had broken my head and scratched my face, and how wine had healed me thereafter.

“I tell thee,” said he, “that if ever a man in this world is to be blessed with wine, thou shalt be he.”

And those who washed me laughed heartily at this, though I cursed inwardly. Yet the blind man’s prophecy proved no lie, and many a time since then have I remembered that man, who doubtless possessed the spirit of prophecy; and I regret the grievances I did him, though I paid him well for them, considering that what he told me that day came to pass as true as Your Honor shall hear hereafter.

Seeing this, and the cruel jests the blind man played upon me, I resolved once and for all to leave him; and as I had already pondered it in my mind and had it in my will, this last prank he played upon me fixed my resolution all the firmer. And so it fell out that the next day we went through the town begging alms. It had rained hard the night before, and because it continued raining that day, he went about praying under certain arcades in that town, where we got not wet; but as night drew on and the rain ceased not, the blind man said unto me:

“Lázaro, this rain is right obstinate, and the darker the night grows, the heavier it falls. Let us take shelter in our inn in good time.”

To get thither we had to cross a gutter which, with so much water, was running wide and deep. I said unto him:

“Uncle, the brook runs very wide; but if thou wilt, I see a place where we may cross more quickly without wetting ourselves, for it narrows greatly there, and with a leap we may cross dry-shod.”

This seemed good counsel to him, and he said:

“Thou art discreet: wherefore I love thee well. Bring me to that spot where the brook narrows, for it is winter now and water is an ill thing, and worse still to have wet feet.”

I, seeing the occasion fitted to my desire, brought him forth from under the arcades and led him straight in front of a stone pillar or post that stood in the public square, upon which and others like it the overhanging roofs of those houses rested; and I said to him:

“Uncle, this is the narrowest place in all the gutter.”

As it was raining hard and the poor wretch was getting soaked, and what with our haste to escape the rain that fell upon us, and chief of all because God blinded his understanding at that hour (which was to give me vengeance upon him), he believed me and said:

“Set me right facing it, and do thou leap the gutter.”

I set him right facing the stone pillar, and giving a leap, posted myself behind the post, like one awaiting the charge of a bull; and I shouted to him:

“Now then! Leap with all thy might, so as to land on this side of the water!”

Scarcely had the words left my mouth when the poor blind man bounded forward like a he-goat, charging with all his might, taking a step backward to make a greater spring; and he dashed his head against the stone post so hard that it sounded like a great calabash, and fell straightway backward, half dead and his head split open.

“How now! Thou couldst smell the sausage and not the stone pillar? Olé! Olé!” cried I.

And leaving him in the hands of many people who ran to his aid, I took to my heels through the town gate at a trot, and before night fell I found myself in Torrijos. What God did with him thereafter I never knew, nor did I ever care to inquire.

Second Treatise

How Lázaro took service with a priest, and of the things that befell him with him

The next day, thinking myself not safe there, I went to a town called Maqueda, where for my sins I fell in with a priest who, when I came asking alms, inquired whether I knew how to help at mass. I answered that I did, as was true: for though ill-treated, a thousand good things did that sinner of a blind man teach me, and this was one of them. In short, the priest received me into his service. I escaped the thunder and fell into the lightning: for the blind man was an Alexander the Great compared to this one, though he was avarice itself, as I have related. I say no more than that all the wretchedness in the world was shut up in this man. I know not whether it was bred in his own nature, or whether he had taken it on with the priestly habit.

He possessed an old chest, locked with its key, which he carried tied with a lace to his doublet; and when the holy bread came from the church, it was straightway cast therein by his own hand, and the chest locked again. And in the whole house there was not a single thing to eat, as is wont to be in other dwellings: no flitch of bacon hanging in the chimney, no cheese set upon a shelf or in a cupboard, no basket with broken crusts left over from the table; which methinks, though I could have tasted none of it, the mere sight thereof would have comforted me. There was only a string of onions, and that locked up in a chamber at the top of the house. Of these I had a ration of one every four days; and when I asked him for the key to fetch it, if anyone was present, he would thrust his hand into his bosom and with great solemnity untie it and give it to me, saying: “Take it, and bring it back straightway, and do nothing but gormandize,” as if all the sweetmeats of Valencia were under its lock, whereas there was not in the said chamber, as I have said, a single cursed thing save the onions hanging from a nail; which he had so strictly counted that if by my evil sins I had exceeded my allowance, it would have cost me dear. In short, I was starving to death. And though he had little charity toward me, he used little more toward himself: five blancas’ worth of meat was his customary allowance for dinner and supper. It is true he shared the broth with me; but as for the meat, never a hope!—naught but a little bread, and would to God he had given me half of what was needful! On Saturdays they eat sheep’s heads in that country, and he would send me for one that cost three maravedis: he would boil it and eat the eyes, the tongue, the brains, the neck, and all the meat on the cheeks, and gave me all the gnawed bones upon my plate, saying:

“Take, eat, triumph! The world is thine: thou leadest a better life than the Pope himself!”

“May God give thee such a life!” said I softly unto myself.

At the end of three weeks in his company I was reduced to such weakness that I could not stand upon my legs for pure hunger. I saw clearly that I was going to the grave, unless God and my own wit provided a remedy. To use my tricks I had no opportunity, having nothing upon which to practice them; and even had there been anything, I could not blind him as I did him whom God forgive—if he died of that blow—for the blind man, crafty though he was, lacked that precious sense and could not perceive me; but this other, no man ever had so keen a sight as he. When we stood at the offertory, never a coin dropped into the basin but he registered it: one eye he kept upon the people and the other upon my hands. His eyes danced in his head as if they were of quicksilver. Every blanca offered he had counted; and when the offering was ended, he would straightway snatch the basin from me and place it upon the altar. Never was I master of a single blanca all the time I lived—or rather died—with him. From the tavern I never brought him a single farthing’s worth of wine; but what little he took from the church offering he stored in his chest and measured out so that it lasted him all week; and to cloak his miserable stinginess he would say to me:

“Look here, boy: priests must be very temperate in their eating and drinking, wherefore I indulge not myself like others.”

Yet the wretch lied falsely, for at fraternities and funerals where we prayed, he ate like a wolf and drank more than a quack healer at other men’s charges. And speaking of funerals—God forgive me!—I was never an enemy to human kind save then, and that was because we ate well and they stuffed me with food. I wished and even prayed to God that He would slay one every day. And when we administered the sacrament to the sick, especially extreme unction, when the priest biddeth those present to pray, I was certainly not the last in the prayer; and with all my heart and good will I besought the Lord, not that He should do with them as best pleased Him, as they are wont to say, but that He would take them from this world. And when any of them recovered—God forgive me!—a thousand times did I send him to the devil; while for him who died, as many blessings did I shower upon him. For in all the time I was there, which was nearly six months, only twenty persons departed this life; and these I verily believe I slew myself, or rather that they died at my request: for the Lord, seeing my raging and continuous death, methinks was pleased to slay them to give me life. Yet for my present misery I found no remedy: for if on the days we buried I lived, on the days when none died, being accustomed to fullness, I felt the return to my daily hunger all the more bitterly. So that I found rest in nothing save death, which I sometimes desired for myself as well as for others; yet I saw it not, though it was ever within me.

Many a time did I think to leave that miserly master; but two things held me back: first, that I trusted not my legs, fearing the weakness that came upon me from sheer famine; and second, I would consider and say:

“I have had two masters: the first starved me, and leaving him, I stumbled upon this other, who has me already in the grave with hunger. If I leave this one and light upon another worse still, what will become of me but to perish?”

With this I dared not stir, holding it as an article of faith that every step downward would find worse knaves; and if I went down one degree lower, Lázaro would be heard of no more in this world.