I have longed for the power of speech, that I might utter a multitude of
things I had laid up in my memory, and which lay there so long that they
were growing musty or almost forgotten. Now, however, that I see myself
so unexpectedly enriched with this divine gift of speech, I intend to
enjoy it and avail myself of it as much as I can, taking pains to say
everything I can recollect, though it be confusedly and helter-skelter,
not knowing when this blessing, which I regard as a loan, shall be
reclaimed from me.
_Scip._ Let us proceed in this manner, friend Berganza: to-night you
shall relate the history of your life to me, and the perils through
which you have passed to the present hour; and to-morrow night, if we
still have speech, I will recount mine to you; for it will be better to
spend the time in narrating our own lives than in trying to know those
of others.
_Berg._ I have ever looked upon you, Scipio, as a discreet dog and a
friend, and now I do so more than ever, since, as a friend, you desire
to tell me your adventures and know mine; and, as a discreet dog, you
apportion the time in which we may narrate them. But first observe
whether any one overhears us.
_Scip._ No one, I believe; since hereabouts there is a soldier going
through a sweating-course; but at this time of night he will be more
disposed to sleep than to listen to anything.
_Berg._ Since then we can speak so securely, hearken; and if I tire you
with what I say, either check me or bid me hold my tongue.
_Scip._ Talk till dawn, or till we are heard, and I will listen to you
with very great pleasure, without interrupting you, unless I see it to
be necessary.
_Berg._ It appears to me that the first time I saw the sun was in
Seville, in its slaughter-houses, which were outside the Puerta do la
Carne; wence I should imagine (were it not for what I shall afterwards
tell you) that my progenitors were some of those mastiff's which are
bred by those ministers of confusion who are called butchers. The first
I knew for a master, was one Nicholas the Pugnosed, a stout, thick-set,
passionate fellow, as all butchers are. This Nicholas taught me and
other whelps to run at bulls in company with old dogs and catch them by
the ears. With great ease I became an eagle among my fellows in this
respect.
_Scip._ I do not wonder, Berganza, that ill-doing is so easily learned,
since it comes by a natural obliquity.
_Berg._ What can I say to you, brother Scipio, of what I saw in those
slaughter-houses, and the enormous things that were done in them? In the
first place, you must understand that all who work in them, from the
lowest to the highest, are people without conscience or humanity,
fearing neither the king nor his justice; most of them living in
concubinage; carrion birds of prey; maintaining themselves and their
doxies by what they steal. On all flesh days, a great number of wenches
and young chaps assemble in the slaughtering place before dawn, all of
them with bags which come empty and go away full of pieces of meat. Not
a beast is killed out of which these people do not take tithes, and that
of the choicest and most savoury pickings. The masters trust implicitly
in these honest folk, not with the hope that they will not rob them (for
that is impossible), but that they may use their knives with some
moderation. But what struck me as the worst thing of all, was that these
butchers make no more of killing a man than a cow. They will quarrel for
straws, and stick a knife into a person's body 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 pique themselves on being men of
mettle, and they observe, too, some punctilios of the bravo; there is
not one of them but has his guardian angel in the Plaza de San
Francesco, whom he propitiates with sirloins, and beef tongues.
_Scip._ If you mean to dwell at such length, friend Berganza, on the
characteristics and faults of all the masters you have had, we had
better pray to heaven to grant us the gift of speech for a year; and
even then I fear, at the rate you are going, you will not get through
half your story. One thing I beg to remark to you, of which you will see
proof when I relate my own adventures; and that is, that some stories
are pleasing in themselves, and others from the manner in which they are
told; I mean that there are some which give satisfaction, though they
are told without preambles and verbal adornments; while others require
to be decked in that way and set off by expressive play of features,
hands, and voice; whereby, instead of flat and insipid, they become
pointed and agreeable. Do not forget this hint, but profit by it in what
you are about to say.
_Berg._ I will do so, if I can, and if I am not hindered by the great
temptation I feel to speak; though, indeed, it appears to me that I
shall have the greatest difficulty in constraining myself to moderation.
_Scip._ Be wary with your tongue, for from that member flow the greatest
ills of human life.
_Berg._ Well, then, to go on with my story, my master taught me to carry
a basket in my mouth, and to defend it against any one who should
attempt to take it from me. He also made me acquainted with the house in
which his mistress lived, and thereby spared her servant the trouble of
coming to the slaughter-house, for I used to carry to her the pieces of
meat he had stolen over night. Once as I was going along on this errand
in the gray of the morning, I heard some one calling me by name from a
window. Looking up I saw an extremely pretty 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 away the meat I was
carrying in the basket and put an old clog in its place? "Be off with
you," she said, when she had done so; "and tell Nicholas the Pugnosed,
your master, not to put trust in brutes." I might easily have made her
give up what she had taken from me; but I would not put a cruel tooth on
those delicate white hands.
_Scip._ You did quite right; for it is the prerogative of beauty always
to be held in respect.
_Berg._ Well, I went back to my master without the meat and with the old
clog. It struck him that I had come back very soon, and seeing the clog,
he guessed the trick, snatched up a knife, and flung it at me; and if I
had not leaped aside, you would not now be listening to my story. I
took to my heels, and was off like a shot behind St. Bernard's, away
over the fields, without stopping to think whither my luck would lead
me. 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, that being
an office which involves the great virtue of protecting and 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 fangs, ascertained my age, and told his master that I had
all the works and tokens of a dog of good breed. Just then up came the
owner of the flock on a gray mare with lance and surge, so that he
looked more a coast-guard than a sheep master.
"What dog is that!" said he to the shepherd; "he seems a good one." "You
may well say that," replied the man; "for I have examined him closely,
and there is not a mark about him but shows that he must be of the right
sort. 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."
"If that be so," said the master, "put on him the collar that belonged
to the dog that is dead, and give him the same rations as the rest,
treat him kindly that he may take a liking to the fold, and remain with
it henceforth." 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. At the same time I had a name bestowed
on me, which was Barcino. I liked my second master, and my new duty very
well; I was careful and diligent in watching the flock, and never
quitted it except in the afternoons, when I went to repose under the
shade of some tree, or rock, or bank, or by the margin of one of the
many streams that watered the country. Nor did I spend those leisure
hours idly, but employed them in calling many things to mind, especially
the life I had led in the slaughter-house, and also that of my master
and all his fellows, who were bound to satisfy the inordinate humours
of their mistresses. O how many things I could tell you of that I
learned in the school of that she-butcher, my master's lady; but I must
pass them over, lest you should think me tedious and censorious.
_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 make
many laugh, is not good if it mortally wounds one; and if you can please
without it, I shall think you more discreet.
_Berg._ I will take your advice, and I earnestly long for the time when
you will relate your own adventures; for seeing how judiciously you
correct the faults into which I fall in my narrative, I may well 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, in certain books, all treating of
shepherds and shepherdesses; and telling how they passed their whole
life in singing and playing on pipes and rebecks, and other old
fashioned instruments. I remember her reading how the shepherd of
Anfriso sang the praises of the peerless Belisarda, and that there was
not a tree on all the mountains of Arcadia on whose trunk he had not sat
and sung from the moment Sol quitted the arms of Aurora, till he threw
himself into those of Thetis, and that even after black night had spread
its murky wings over the face of the earth, he did not cease his
melodious complaints. I did not forget the shepherd Elicio, more
enamoured than bold, of whom it was said, that without attending to his
own loves or his flock, he entered into others' griefs; nor the great
shepherd Filida, unique painter of a single portrait, who was more
faithful than happy; nor the anguish of Sireno and the remorse of Diana,
and how she thanked God and the sage Felicia, who, with her enchanted
water, undid that maze of entanglements and difficulties. I bethought me
of many other tales of the same sort, but they were not worthy of being
remembered.
The habits and occupations of my masters, and the rest of the shepherds
in that quarter, were very different from those of the shepherds in the
books. If mine sang, it was no tuneful and finely composed strains, but
very rude and vulgar songs, to the accompaniment not of pipes and
rebecks, but to that of one crook knocked against another, or of bits of
tile jingled between the fingers, and sung with voices not melodious and
tender, but so coarse and out of tune, that whether singly or in chorus,
they seemed to be howling or grunting. They passed the greater part of
the day in hunting up their fleas or mending their brogues; and none of
them were named Amarillis, Filida, Galatea, or Diana; nor were there any
Lisardos, Lausos, Jacintos, or Riselos; but all were Antones, Domingos,
Pablos, or Llorentes. This led me to conclude that all those books about
pastoral life are only fictions ingeniously written for the amusement of
the idle, and that there is not a word of truth in them; for, were it
otherwise, there would have remained among my shepherds some trace of
that happy life of yore, with its pleasant meads, spacious groves,
sacred mountains, handsome gardens, clear streams and crystal fountains,
its ardent but no less decorous love-descants, with here the shepherd,
there the shepherdess all woe-begone, and the air made vocal everywhere
with flutes and pipes and flageolets.
_Scip._ Enough, Berganza; get back into your road, and trot on.
_Berg._ I am much obliged to you, friend Scipio; for, but for your hint,
I was getting so warm upon the scent, that I should not have stopped
till I had given you one whole specimen of those books that had so
deceived me. But a time will come when I shall discuss the whole matter
more fully and more opportunely than now.
_Scip._ Look to your feet, and don't run after your tail, that is to
say, recollect that you are an animal devoid of reason; or if you seem
at present to have a little of it, we are already agreed that this is a
supernatural and altogether unparalleled circumstance.
_Berg._ That would be all very well if I were still in my pristine state
of ignorance; but now that I bethink me of what I should have mentioned
to you in the beginning of our conversation, I not only cease to wonder
that I speak, but I am terrified at the thought of leaving off.
_Scip._ Can you not tell me that something now that you recollect it?
_Berg._ It was a certain affair that occurred to me with a sorntess, a
disciple of la Camacha de Montilla.
_Scip._ Let me hear it now, before you proceed with the story of your
life.
_Berg._ No, not till the proper time. Have patience and listen to the
recital of my adventures in the order they occurred, for they will
afford you more pleasure in that way.
_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, for it seemed to me that in that way I ate the bread of
industry, and that sloth, the root and mother of all vices, came not
nigh me; for if I rested by day, I never slept at night, the wolves
continually assailing us and calling us to arms. The instant the
shepherds said to me, "The wolf! the wolf! at him, Barcino," I dashed
forward before all the other dogs, in the direction pointed out to me by
the shepherds. 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; and I found in the fold either a ewe or a wether slaughtered
and half eaten by the wolf. It vexed me desperately to see of what
little avail were all my care and diligence. 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. Down would
come upon us a shower of sticks and revilings; and so, finding myself
punished without fault, and that my care, alertness, and courage were of
no avail to keep off the wolf, I resolved to change my manner of
proceeding, and 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 contrived 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; and from my lurking-place I saw and heard how two
shepherds picked out one of the fattest wethers, and slaughtered it in
such a manner, that it really appeared next morning as if the
executioner had been a wolf. I was horror-struck, 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 carcase, and ate the rest, and that the choicest part,
themselves. As usual, they had a scolding, and the dogs a beating. Thus
there were no wolves, yet the flock dwindled away, and I was dumb, all
which filled me with amazement and anguish. O Lord! said I to myself,
who can ever remedy this villany? Who will have the power to make known
that the defence 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; and accordingly there die many
more of those who are trustful than of those who are wary. But the
misfortune is, that it is impossible for people to get on in the world
in any tolerable way without mutual confidence. However, let us drop
this subject: there is no need that we should be evermore preaching. Go
on.
_Berg._ I determined then to quit that service, though it seemed so good
a one, and to choose another, in which well-doing, if not rewarded, was
at least not punished. I went back to Seville, and entered the service
of a very rich merchant.
_Scip._ How did you set about getting yourself a master? As things are
now-a-days, 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 scrutinise his birth
and parentage, examine into his qualifications, and even require to know
what clothes he has got; but for entering the service of God, the
poorest is the richest, the humblest is the best born; and whoso is but
disposed to serve him in purity of 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._ All this is preaching, Scipio.
_Scip._ Well, it strikes me that it is. So go on.
_Berg._ With respect to your question, how I set about getting a master:
you are aware that humility is the base and foundation of all virtues,
and that without it there are none. It smooths inconveniences, overcomes
difficulties, and is a means which always conducts us to glorious ends;
it makes friends of enemies, tempers the wrath of the choleric, and
abates the arrogance of the proud: it is the mother of modesty, and
sister of temperance. I availed myself of this virtue whenever I wanted
to get a place in any house, after having first considered and carefully
ascertained that it was one which could maintain a great dog. I then
placed myself near the door; and whenever any one entered whom I guessed
to be a stranger, I barked at him; and when the master entered, I went
up to him with my head down, my tail wagging, and licked his shoes. If
they drove me out with sticks, I took it patiently, and turned with the
same gentleness to fawn in the same way on the person who beat me. The
rest let me alone, seeing my perseverance and my generous behaviour; and
after one or two turns of this kind, I got a footing in the house. I was
a good servant: they took a liking to me immediately; and I was never
turned out, but dismissed myself, or, to speak more properly, I ran
away; and sometimes I met with such a master, that but for the
persecution of fortune I should have remained with him to this day.
_Scip._ It was just in the same way that I got into the houses of the
masters I served. It seems that we read men's thoughts.
_Berg._ I will tell you now what happened to me after I left the fold in
the power of those reprobates. I returned, as I have said, to Seville,
the asylum of the poor and refuge for the destitute, which embraces in
its greatness not only the rude but the mighty and nourishing. I planted
myself at the door of a large house belonging to a merchant, exerted
myself as usual, and after a few trials gained admission. They kept me
tied up behind the door by day, and let me loose at night. I did my duty
with great care and diligence, barked at strangers, and growled at
those who were 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 neighbours; and my master was so pleased with
my good 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 by no end of leaps when I saw my
master, especially when he came home after being abroad; and such were
my demonstrations of 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
gambolled all round him, without venturing to lay my paws on him; for I
bethought me of that ass in Æsop's Fables, who was ass enough to think
of fondling his master in the same manner as his favourite lap-dog, and
was well basted for his pains. I understood that fable to signify, that
what is graceful and comely in some is not so in others. Let the ribald
flout and jeer, the mountebank tumble,--let the common fellow, who has
made it his business, imitate the song of birds and the gestures of
animals, but not the man of quality, who can deserve no credit or renown
from any skill in these things.
_Scip._ Enough said, Berganza; I understand you; go on.
_Berg._ Would that others for whom I say this understood me as well! For
there is something or other in my nature which makes me feel greatly
shocked when I see a cavalier make a buffoon of himself, and taking
pride in being able to play at thimblerig, and in dancing the _chacona_
to perfection, I know a cavalier who boasted, that he had, at the
request of a sacristan, cut out thirty-two paper ornaments, to stick
upon the black cloth over a monument; and he was so proud of his
performance that he took his friends to see it, as though he were
showing them pennons and trophies taken from the enemy, and hung over
the tombs of his forefathers. Well, this merchant I have been telling
you of had two sons, one aged twelve, the other about fourteen, who were
studying the humanities in the classes of the Company of Jesus. They
went in pomp to the college, accompanied by their tutor, and by pages to
carry their books, and what they called their Vademecum. To see them go
with such parade, 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 by no other servant than a
negro, and sometimes mounted upon a sorry mule.
_Scip._ You must know, Berganza, that it is a customary thing with the
merchants of Seville, and of other cities also, to 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 as
they rarely attend to anything else than their bargains, they spend
little on themselves; but as ambition and wealth burn to display
themselves, they show their own in the persons of their sons,
maintaining them as sumptuously as if they were sons of princes.
Sometimes too they purchase titles for them, and set upon their breasts
the mark that so much distinguishes men of rank from the commonalty.
_Berg._ It is ambition, but a generous ambition that seeks to improve
one's condition without prejudice to others.
_Scip._ Seldom or never can ambition consist with abstinence from injury
to others.
_Berg._ Have we not said that we are not to speak evil of any one?
_Scip._ Ay, but I don't speak evil of any one.