The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

DIEGO DE MENDOZA

Lazarillo de Tormes

Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza's career was hardly of a kind that would be ordinarily associated with a lively romance of vagabondage. A grandee of high birth, an ambassador of the Emperor Charles V., an accomplished soldier and a learned historian--such was the creator of the hungry rogue Lazarillo, and the founder of the "picaresque" school of fiction, or the romance of roguery, which is not yet extinct. Don Diego de Mendoza, born early in 1503, was educated at the University of Salamanca, and spent most of the rest of his days in courts and camps. He died at Madrid in April 1575. Although written during Mendoza's college days, "Lazarillo de Tormes" did not appear until 1533, when it was published anonymously at Antwerp. During the following year it was reprinted at Bruges, but it fell under the ban of the Inquisition, and subsequent editions were considerably expurgated. Such was its popularity that it was continued by inferior authors after Mendoza's death.

I.--The Blind Man

You must know, in the first place, that my name is Lazarillo de Tormes, and that I am the son of Thomas Gonzalez and Antonia Perez, natives of Tejares, a village of Salamanca. My father was employed to superintend the operations of a water-mill on the river Tormes, from which I took my surname; and I had only reached my ninth year, when he was taken into custody for administering certain copious, but injudicious, bleedings to the sacks of customers. Being thrown out of employment by this disaster, he joined an armament then preparing against the Moors in the quality of mule-driver to a gentleman; and in that expedition he, along with his master, finished his life and services together.

My widowed mother hired a small place in the city of Salamanca, and opened an eating-house for the accommodation of students. It happened some time afterwards that a blind man came to lodge at the house, and thinking that I should do very well to lead him about, asked my mother to part with me. He promised to receive me not as a servant, but as a son; and thus I left Salamanca with my blind and aged master. He was as keen as an eagle in his own calling. He knew prayers suitable for all occasions, and could repeat them with a devout and humble countenance; he could prognosticate; and with respect to the medicinal art, he would tell you that Galen was an ignoramus compared with him. By these means his profits were very considerable.

With all this, however, I am sorry to say that I never met with so avaricious and so wicked an old curmudgeon; he allowed me almost daily to die of hunger, without troubling himself about my necessities; and, to say the truth, if I had not helped myself by means of a ready wit I should have closed my account from sheer starvation.

The old man was accustomed to carry his food in a sort of linen knapsack, secured at the mouth by a padlock; and in adding to or taking from his store he used such vigilance that it was almost impossible to cheat him of a single morsel. By means of a small rent, however, which I slyly effected in one of the seams of the bag, I helped myself to the choicest pieces.

Whenever we ate, he kept a jar of wine near him; and I adopted the practice of bestowing on it sundry loving though stolen embraces. The fervency of my attachment was soon discovered in the deficiency of the wine, and the old man tied the jar to himself by the handle. I now procured a large straw, which I dipped into the mouth of the jar; but the old traitor must have heard me drink with it, for he placed the jar between his knees, keeping the mouth closed with his hand.

I then bored a small hole in the bottom of the jar, and closed it very delicately with wax. As the poor old man sat over the fire, with the jar between his knees, the heat melted the wax, and I, placing my mouth underneath, received the whole contents of the jar. The old boy was so enraged and surprised that he thought the devil himself had been at work. But he discovered the hole; and when next day I placed myself under the jar, he brought the jar down with full force on my mouth. Nearly all my teeth were broken, and my face was horribly cut with the fragments of the broken vessel.