believer in the holy law of Christianity. Their only thought is how to
scrape up money and keep it; and to this end they toil incessantly and
spend nothing. The moment a real falls into their clutches, they condemn
it to perpetual imprisonment; so that by dint of 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 of either sex make monastic vows, but all marry and
multiply, for thrifty living is a great promoter of fecundity. They are
not wasted by war or excessive toil; they plunder us in a quiet way, and
enrich themselves with the fruits of our patrimonies which they sell
back to us. They have no servants, for they all wait upon themselves.
They are at no expense for the education of their sons, for all their
lore is but how to rob us. From the twelve sons of Jacob, who entered
Egypt, as I have heard, there had sprung, when Moses freed them from
captivity, six hundred thousand fighting men, besides women and
children. From this we may infer how much the Moriscoes have multiplied,
and how incomparably greater must be their numbers.
_Scip._ Means have been sought for remedying the mischiefs you have
mentioned and hinted at; and, indeed, I am sure that those which you
have passed over in silence, are even more serious than those which you
have touched upon. But our commonwealth has most wise and zealous
champions, who, considering that Spain produces and retains in her bosom
such vipers as the Moriscoes, will, with God's help, provide a sure and
prompt remedy for so great an evil. Go on.
_Berg._ My master being a stingy hunks, like all his caste, I lived
like himself chiefly on maize bread and buckwheat porridge; but this
penury 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 baize, and was occupied in
writing in a note book, 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 drew near him unperceived, and heard him muttering between
his teeth. At last, after a long silence, he cried out aloud, "Glorious!
The very best verse I ever composed in my life!" and down went something
in his note book. From all this, it was plain that the luckless wight
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
ecstacies, and then writing as before.
Meanwhile there came into the garden another young man, handsome and
well dressed, with papers in his hand, at which he glanced from time to
time. The new comer 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 happiest manner possible,"
was the reply.
"How is that?"
"I will tell you! His Holiness the Pope comes forth in his pontificals,
with twelve cardinals in purple canonicals--for the action of my comedy
is supposed to take place at the season of _mutatio caparum_, when their
eminences are not dressed in scarlet but in purple--therefore propriety
absolutely requires that my cardinals should wear purple. This is a
capital point, and one on which your common run of writers would be sure
to blunder; but as for me I could not go wrong, for I have read the
whole Roman ceremonial through, merely that I might be exact as to these
dresses."
"But where do you suppose," said the other, "that our manager is to find
purple robes for twelve cardinals?"
"If a single one is wanting," cried the poet, "I would as soon think of
flying, as of letting my comedy be represented without it. Zounds! is
the public to lose 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,
not excepting even the nosegay of Duraja!"
I now perceived 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
might be thankful that he had not brought in the whole conclave, to be
present at the memorable event which he proposed to immortalise 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
twenty raisins, or perhaps not so many, 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, stalks and all, for I
did not see him throw anything away, adding to them the pieces of bread,
which had got such a colour from the lining of his pocket, that they
looked mouldy, 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 penury of poets; but greater was
my need, since it obliged me to eat what he left.
As long as he was busy with the composition of his comedy he did not
fail to visit the garden, nor did I want crusts, for he shared them with
me very liberally; and then we went to the well, where we satisfied our
thirst 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 Morisco and seek my fortune in the city. As I
entered it, I saw my poet coming out of the famous monastery of San
Geronimo. He came to me with open arms, and I was no less delighted 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 ampler purse than charity, whose liberal hands are never poor.
After some time, we arrived at the house of a theatrical manager, called
Angulo the Bad, to distinguish him from another Angulo, not a manager
but a player, one of the best ever seen. The whole company was assembled
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 myself,
who formed the whole audience. 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 utter ruin and perdition of the poet; and I actually
shivered with vexation to see the solitude in which his audience had
left him. I wonder did his prophetic soul presage to him the disgrace
impending over him; for all the players--and there were more than twelve
of them--came back, laid hold on the poet, without saying a word, and,
had it not been for the authoritative interference of the manager, they
would have tossed him in a blanket. I was confounded by this sad turn of
affairs, the manager was incensed, the players very merry; and the poor
forlorn poet, with great patience, but a somewhat wry face, took the
comedy, thrust it into his bosom, muttering, "It is not right to cast
pearls before swine," and sadly quitted the place without another word.
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; and within a
month I became an excellent performer in interludes and pantomimes.
Interludes, you know, usually end with a cudgelling bout, but in my
master's theatre they ended with setting me at the characters of the
piece, whom I worried and tumbled one over the other, to the huge
delight of the ignorant spectators, and my master's great gain.
Oh, Scipio! what things I could tell you that I saw among these
players, and two other companies to which I belonged; but I must leave
them for another day, for it would be impossible to compress them within
moderate limits. 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,
which might serve to disenchant many who idolise these fictitious
divinities.
_Scip._ I see clearly, Berganza, that the field is large; but leave it
now, and go on.
_Berg._ I arrived with a company of players in this city of Valladolid,
where they gave me a wound in an interlude that was near being the death
of me. I could not revenge myself then, because I was muzzled, and I had
no mind to do so afterwards in cold blood; for deliberate vengeance
argues a cruel and malicious disposition. I grew weary of this
employment, not because it was laborious, but because I saw in it many
things which called for amendment and castigation; and, as 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 practise them; but better late than never. Well,
then, seeing you one night carrying the lantern with that good Christian
Mahudes, I noticed how contented you were, how righteous and holy was
your occupation. Filled with honest emulation, I longed to follow your
steps; and, with that laudable intention, I placed myself before
Mahudes, who immediately elected me 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 pat.
_Scip._ Very well; but be quick, for, to the best of my belief, it
cannot be far from daylight.
_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 persons who are
called projectors.
_Scip._ I recollect 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 he complained
of.
"Have I not good cause for complaint?" he replied. "I have strictly
observed the rule laid down by Horace in his Art of Poetry, not to bring
to light any work until ten years after it has been composed. Now, I
have a work on which I was engaged for twenty years, and which has lain
by me for twelve. The subject is sublime, the invention perfectly novel,
the episodes singularly happy, the versification noble, and the
arrangement admirable, for the beginning is in perfect correspondence
with the middle and the end. Altogether it is a lofty, sonorous, heroic
poem, delectable and full of matter; and yet I cannot find a prince to
whom I may dedicate it--a prince, I say, who is intelligent, liberal,
and magnanimous. Wretched and depraved age this of ours!"
"What is the subject of the work?" inquired the alchemist.
"It treats," said the poet, "of that part of the history of king Arthur
of England which archbishop Turpin left unwritten, together with the
history of the quest of the Sangreal, the whole in heroic measure,--part
rhymes, part blank-verse; and in dactyles moreover, that is to say, in
dactylic noun substantives, without any admission of verbs."
"For my part, I am not much of a judge in matters of poetry," returned
the alchemist, "and therefore I cannot precisely estimate the misfortune
you complain of; but in any case it cannot equal my own in wanting
means, or a prince to back me and supply me with the requisites, for
prosecuting the science of alchemy; but for which want alone I should
now be rolling in gold, and richer than ever was Midas, Crassus, or
Croesus."
"Have you ever succeeded, Señor Alchemist," said the mathematician, "in
extracting gold from the other metals?"
"I have not yet extracted it," the alchemist replied, "but I know for
certain that the thing is to 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 of you 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 two and twenty 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 on a sudden so far away from it that I
am utterly amazed. It is just the same with the quadrature of the
circle. I have been within such a hair's breadth of it, that I cannot
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 another
Sisyphus, I begin again to climb the hill which I have just rolled down,
along with all the mass of my labours."
The projector, who had hitherto kept silence, now struck in. "Here we
are," he said, "four complainants, 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 projector, and have at various times offered sundry
valuable projects to his majesty, all to his advantage, and without
prejudice to the realm; and I have now a memorial in which I supplicate
his majesty to appoint a person to whom I may communicate a new project
of mine, which will be the means of entirely liquidating all his debts.
But from the fate which all my other memorials have had, I foresee that
this one also will be thrown into the dust-hole. Lest, however, your
worships should think me crack-brained, I will explain my project to
you, though this be in some degree a publication of my secret.
"I propose that all his majesty's vassals, from the age of fourteen to
sixty, be bound once a month, on a certain appointed day, to fast on
bread and water; and that the whole expenditure, which would otherwise
be made on 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 doit, as each shall declare on
oath. By this means, in the course of twenty years the king will be
freed from all debts and incumbrances. The calculation is easily made.
There are in Spain more than three millions of persons of the specified
age, exclusive of invalids, old, and young, and there is not one of
these but spends at least a real and a half daily; however, I am willing
to put it at a real only, and less it cannot be, even were they to eat
nothing but leeks. Now does it not strike your worships that it would be
no bad thing to realise every month three millions of 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
and would serve their king, and some of them even might find it
beneficial to their health. The project is in every way admirable, as
you must confess; the money too might be collected by parishes, without
the cost of tax gatherers and receivers, those plagues and bloodsuckers
of the realm."
The others all laughed at the projector's scheme, and even he himself
joined in the laugh at last. For my part I found much matter for
reflection 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 shall have done, for I think day is
beginning to dawn. One day I accompanied Mahudes to ask for alms in the
house of the corregidor of this city, who is a great cavalier and a very
great Christian. We found him alone, and I thought fit to take advantage
of that opportunity to give him certain counsels which I had gathered
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 labour,--an intolerable evil demanding an immediate and
effectual remedy. Wishing to impart what I had heard to the corregidor,
I lifted up my voice, thinking to speak; but instead of articulate
speech I barked so loudly that the corregidor called out in a passion to
his servants to drive me out of the room with sticks; whereupon one of
them caught up a copper syphon, which Was the nearest thing at hand, and
thrashed me with it so, that I feel it in my ribs to this hour.
_Scip._ And do you complain of that, Berganza?
_Berg._ Nay; have I not reason to complain, since I feel the pain even
now; and since it appears to me that my good intentions merited no such
chastisement?
_Scip._ Look you, Berganza, no one should interfere where he is not
wanted, nor take upon himself a business that in no wise is 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 cannot 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; and having had the lesson well beaten
into me, I will henceforth act accordingly. That same night I entered
the house of a lady of quality, who had in her arms a little lap-dog, so
very diminutive that she could have hid it in her 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
animal, either I would take no notice of you at all, or I would make
mince meat of you." The little wretch was an example of the common
rule--that mean-souled persons when they are in favour 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; whilst virtue and good sense are
always the same, whether clothed or naked, alone or accompanied. But let
us break off now; for the light beaming in through those chinks shows
that the dawn is far advanced.
_Berg._ Be it so; and I trust in heaven that to-night we shall find
ourselves in a condition to renew our conversation.
The licentiate finished the reading of this dialogue, and the Alferez
his nap, both at the same time. "Although this colloquy is manifestly
fictitious," said the licentiate, "it is, in my opinion, so well
composed, that the Señor Alferez may well proceed with the second part."
"Since you give me such encouragement, I will do so," replied the
alferez, "without further discussing the question with you, whether the
dogs spoke or not."
"There is no need that we should go over that ground again," said the
licentiate. "I admire the art and the invention you have displayed in
the dialogue, and that is enough. Let us go to the Espolon,[65] and
recreate our bodily eyes, as we have gratified those of our minds."
[65] A promenade on the banks of the Arlozoro at Valladolid.
"With all my heart," said the alferez, and away they went.
THE LITTLE GIPSY GIRL.
It would almost seem that the Gitanos and Gitanas, or male and female
gipsies, had been sent into the world for the sole purpose of thieving.
Born of parents who are thieves, reared among thieves, and educated as
thieves, they finally go forth perfected in their vocation, accomplished
at all points, and ready for every species of roguery. In them the love
of thieving, and the ability to exercise it, are qualities inseparable
from their existence, and never lost until the hour of their death.
Now it chanced that an old woman of this race, one who had merited
retirement on full pay as a veteran in the ranks of Cacus, brought up a
girl whom she called Preciosa, and declared to be her granddaughter. To
this child she imparted all her own acquirements, all the various tricks
of her art. Little Preciosa became the most admired dancer in all the
tribes of Gipsydom; she was the most beautiful and discreet of all their
maidens; nay she shone conspicuous not only among the gipsies, but even
as compared with the most lovely and accomplished damsels whose praises
were at that time sounded forth by the voice of fame. Neither sun, nor
wind, nor all those vicissitudes of weather, to which the gipsies are
more constantly exposed than any other people, could impair the bloom of
her complexion or embrown her hands; and what is more remarkable, the
rude manner in which she was reared only served to reveal that she must
have sprung from something better than the Gitano stock; for she was
extremely pleasing and courteous in conversation, and lively though she
was, yet in no wise did she display the least unseemly levity; on the
contrary, amidst all her sprightliness, there was at the same time so
much genuine decorum in her manner, that in the presence of Preciosa no
gitana, old or young, ever dared to sing lascivious songs, or utter
unbecoming words.
The grandmother fully perceived what a treasure she had in her
grandchild; and the old eagle determined to set her young eaglet flying,
having been careful to teach her how to live by her talons. Preciosa was
rich in hymns, ballads, seguidillas, sarabands, and other ditties,
especially romances, which she sang with peculiar grace; for the cunning
grandmother knew by experience that such accomplishments, added to the
youth and beauty of her granddaughter, were the best means of increasing
her capital, and therefore she failed not to promote their cultivation
in every way she could. Nor was the aid of poets wanting; for some there
are who do not disdain to write for the gipsies, as there are those who
invent miracles for the pretended blind, and go snacks with them in what
they gain from charitable believers.