"I declare thou hast a devil of some sort in thy body!" said Sancho. "God

help thee, what a lot of things thou hast strung together, one after the

other, without head or tail! What have Cascajo, and the broaches and the

proverbs and the airs, to do with what I say? Look here, fool and dolt

(for so I may call you, when you don't understand my words, and run away

from good fortune), if I had said that my daughter was to throw herself

down from a tower, or go roaming the world, as the Infanta Dona Urraca

wanted to do, you would be right in not giving way to my will; but if in

an instant, in less than the twinkling of an eye, I put the 'Don' and 'my

lady' on her back, and take her out of the stubble, and place her under a

canopy, on a dais, and on a couch, with more velvet cushions than all the

Almohades of Morocco ever had in their family, why won't you consent and

fall in with my wishes?"

"Do you know why, husband?" replied Teresa; "because of the proverb that

says 'who covers thee, discovers thee.' At the poor man people only throw

a hasty glance; on the rich man they fix their eyes; and if the said rich

man was once on a time poor, it is then there is the sneering and the

tattle and spite of backbiters; and in the streets here they swarm as

thick as bees."

"Look here, Teresa," said Sancho, "and listen to what I am now going to

say to you; maybe you never heard it in all your life; and I do not give

my own notions, for what I am about to say are the opinions of his

reverence the preacher, who preached in this town last Lent, and who

said, if I remember rightly, that all things present that our eyes

behold, bring themselves before us, and remain and fix themselves on our

memory much better and more forcibly than things past."

These observations which Sancho makes here are the other ones on account

of which the translator says he regards this chapter as apocryphal,

inasmuch as they are beyond Sancho's capacity.

"Whence it arises," he continued, "that when we see any person well

dressed and making a figure with rich garments and retinue of servants,

it seems to lead and impel us perforce to respect him, though memory may

at the same moment recall to us some lowly condition in which we have

seen him, but which, whether it may have been poverty or low birth, being

now a thing of the past, has no existence; while the only thing that has

any existence is what we see before us; and if this person whom fortune

has raised from his original lowly state (these were the very words the

padre used) to his present height of prosperity, be well bred, generous,

courteous to all, without seeking to vie with those whose nobility is of

ancient date, depend upon it, Teresa, no one will remember what he was,

and everyone will respect what he is, except indeed the envious, from

whom no fair fortune is safe."




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