The World's Greatest Books - Volume 6 Part 35

The night when Moncada prepared to resume his story was a dark and stormy one. The two men drew close to the fire.

"Hus.h.!.+" suddenly said Moncada.

John Melmoth listened, and half rose from his chair.

"We are watched!" he exclaimed.

At that moment the door opened, and a figure appeared at it. The figure advanced slowly to the centre of the room. Moncada crossed himself, and attempted to pray. John Melmoth, nailed to his chair, gazed upon the form that stood before him--it was indeed Melmoth the Wanderer. But the eyes were dim; those beacons lit by an infernal fire were no longer visible.

"Mortals," said the Wanderer, in strange and solemn accents, "you are here to talk of my destiny. That distiny is accomplished. Your ancestor has come home," he continued, turning to John Melmoth. "If my crimes have exceeded those of mortality, so will my punishment. And the time for that punishment is come.

"It is a hundred and fifty years since I first probed forbidden secrets.

I have now to pay the penalty. None can partic.i.p.ate in my destiny but with his own consent. _None has consented._ It has been reported of me, as you know, that I obtained from the enemy of souls a range of existence beyond the period of mortality--a power to pa.s.s over s.p.a.ce with the swiftness of thought--to encounter perils unharmed, to penetrate into dungeons, whose bolts were as flax and tow at my touch.

It has been said that this power was accorded to me that I might be enabled to tempt wretches at their fearful hour of extremity with the promise of deliverance and immunity on condition of their exchanging situations with me.

"No one has ever changed destinies with Melmoth the Wanderer. _I have traversed the world in search, and no one to gain that world would lose his own soul!_" He paused. "Let me, if possible, obtain an hour's repose. Ay, repose--sleep!" he repeated, answering the astonishment of his hearers' looks. "My existence is still human!"

And a ghastly and derisive smile wandered over his features as he spoke.

John Melmoth and Moncada quitted the apartment, and the Wanderer, sinking back in his chair slept profoundly.

The two men did not dare to approach the door until noon next day. The Wanderer started up, and they saw with horror the change that had come over him. The lines of extreme age were visible in every feature.

"My hour is come," he said. "Leave me alone. Whatever noises you may hear in the course of the awful night that is approaching, come not near, at peril of your lives. Be warned! Retire!"

They pa.s.sed that day in intense anxiety, and at night had no thought of repose. At midnight sounds of indescribable horror began to issue from the Wanderer's apartment, shrieks of supplication, yells of blasphemy-- they could not tell which. The sounds suddenly ceased. The two men hastened into the room. It was empty.

A small door leading to a back staircase was open, and near it they discovered the trace of footsteps of a person who had been walking in damp sand or clay. They traced the footsteps down the stairs, through the garden, and across a field to a rock that overlooked the sea.

Through the furze that clothed this rock, there was a kind of track as if a person had dragged his way, or been dragged, through it. The two men gained the summit of the rock; the wide, waste, engulfing ocean was beneath. On a crag below, something hung as floating to the blast.

Melmoth clambered down and caught it. It was the handkerchief which the Wanderer had worn about his neck the preceding night. That was the last trace of the Wanderer.

Melmoth and Moncada exchanged looks of silent horror, and returned slowly home.

DIEGO DE MENDOZA

Lazarillo de Tormes

Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza's career was hardly of a kind that would be ordinarily a.s.sociated with a lively romance of vagabondage. A grandee of high birth, an amba.s.sador 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.

After this, he continually ill-treated me; on the slightest occasion he would flog me without mercy. If any humane person interfered, he immediately recounted the history of the jar; they would laugh, and say, "Thrash him well, good man; he deserves it richly!" I determined to revenge myself on the old tyrant, and seized an opportunity on a rainy day when a stream was flowing down the street. I took him to a point where the stream pa.s.sed a stone pillar, told him that the water was narrowest there, and invited him to jump. He jumped accordingly, and gave his poor old pate such a smash against the pillar that he fell senseless. I took to my heels as swiftly as possible; nor did I even trouble to inquire what became of him.

_II.--The Priest_

The next day I went to a place called Maqueda, where, as it were in punishment for my evil deeds, I fell in with a certain priest. I accosted him for alms, when he inquired whether I knew how to a.s.sist at ma.s.s. I answered that I did, which was true, for the blind man had taught me. The priest, therefore, engaged me on the spot.

There is an old proverb which speaks of getting out of the frying-pan into the fire, which was indeed my unhappy case in this change of masters. This priest was, without exception, the most n.i.g.g.ardly of all miserable devils I have ever met with. He had a large old chest, the key of which he always carried about him; and when the charity bread came from the church, he would with his own hands deposit it in the chest and turn the key. The only other eatable we had was a string of onions, of which every fourth day I was allowed _one_. Five farthings' worth of meat was his allowance for dinner and supper. It is true he divided the broth with me; but my share of the meat I might have put in my eye instead of my mouth, and have been none the worse for it; but sometimes, by good luck, I got a little morsel of bread.

At the end of three weeks I was so exhausted with sheer hunger that I could hardly stand on my legs. One day, when my miserable, covetous thief of a master had gone out, an angel, in the likeness of a tinker, knocked at the door, and inquired whether I had anything to mend.

Suddenly a light flashed upon me. "I have lost the key of this chest,"

said I, "can you fit it?" He drew forth a bunch of keys, fitted it, and lo! the lid of the chest arose. "I have no money," I said to my preserver, "but give me the key and help yourself." He helped himself, and so, when he had gone, did I.

But it was not predestined for me that such good luck should continue long; for on the third day I beheld the priest turning and counting the loaves over and over again. At last he said, "If I were not a.s.sured of the security of this chest, I should say that somebody had stolen my bread; but from this day I shall count the loaves; there remain now exactly nine and a piece."

"May nine curses light upon you, you miserable beggar!" said I to myself. The utmost I dared do, for some days, was to nibble here and there a morsel of the crust. At last it occurred to me that the chest was old and in parts broken. Might it not be supposed that rats had made an entrance? I therefore picked one loaf after another until I made up a tolerable supply of crumbs, which I ate like so many sugar-plums.

The priest, when he returned, beheld the havoc with dismay.

"Confound the rats!" quoth he. "There is no keeping anything from them."

I fared well at dinner, for he pared off all the places which he supposed the rats had nibbled at, and gave them to me, saying, "There, eat that; rats are very clean animals." But I received another shock when I beheld my tormentor nailing pieces of wood over all the holes in the chest. All I could do was to sc.r.a.pe other holes with an old knife; and so it went on until the priest set a trap for the rats, baiting it with bits of cheese that he begged from his neighbours. I did not nibble my bread with less relish because I added thereto the bait from the rat-trap. The priest, almost beside himself with astonishment at finding the bread nibbled, the bait gone, and no rat in the trap, consulted his neighbours, who suggested, to his great alarm, that the thief must be a snake.

For security, I kept my precious key in my mouth--which I could do without inconvenience, as I had been in the habit of carrying in my mouth the coins I had stolen from my former blind master. But one night, when I was fast asleep, it was decreed by an evil destiny that the key should be placed in such a position in my mouth that my breath caused a loud whistling noise. My master concluded that this must be the hissing of the snake; he arose and stole with a club in his hand towards the place whence the sound proceeded; then, lifting the club, he discharged with all his force a blow on my unfortunate head. When he had fetched a light, he found me moaning, with the tell-tale key protruding from my mouth.

"Thank G.o.d," he exclaimed, "that the rats and snakes which have so long devoured my substance are at last discovered!"

As soon as my wounds were healed, he turned me out of his door as if I had been in league with the evil one.

_III.--The Poor Gentleman_

By the a.s.sistance of some kind people I made my way to Toledo, where I sought my living by begging from door to door. But one day I encountered a certain esquire; he was well dressed, and walked with an air of ease and consequence. "Are you seeking a master, my boy?" he said. I replied that I was, and he bade me follow him.