At this time we came up to a carriage that was about to leave.I put the things I was carrying in it and asked her to pay me for my work.The chatterbox said she would be glad to,and she hauled off and hit me so hard she knocked me to the ground.Then she said,"Are you so stupid that you ask someone of my profession for money?Didn't I tell you before we left the brothel that I would give you satisfaction there for your work if you wanted?"
She jumped into the carriage like a nag and spurred the horses away,leaving me feeling the sting.So there I sat,like a jackass,not sure what had happened to me.I thought that if that job finished as well as it was starting out,I would be rich by the end of the year.
I hadn't even left there when another carriage arrived from Alcala de Henares.The people inside jumped down:they were all whores,students,and friars.One of them belonged to the Franciscan order,and he asked me if I would like to carry his bundle to his monastery.I told him I would be glad to because I saw that he certainly wouldn't trick me the way the whore had done.I loaded it onto my back,and it was so heavy I could barely carry it,but I thought of the payment I would get,and that gave me strength.When we reached the monastery I was very tired because it had been so far.The friar took his bundle and said,"May heaven reward you,"and then he closed the door behind him.
I waited for him to come back out and pay me,but when I saw how long he was taking,I knocked on the door.The gatekeeper came out and asked me what I wanted.I told him I wanted to be paid for carrying the bundle I'd brought.He told me to go away,that they didn't pay anything there.As he closed the door he told me not to knock again because it was the hour for meditations,and if I did he would whip me thoroughly.I stood there,stupified.A poor man--one of those who were standing inside the vestibule--said to me,"Brother,you might as well go away.These fathers never have any money.They live on what other people give them.""They can live on whatever they want to,but they'll pay me or I'm not Lazaro of Tormes."
I began to knock again very angrily.The lay brother came out even angrier,and without saying so much as,how do you do?he knocked me to the ground like a ripe pear,and holding me down,he kicked me a good half-dozen times,then pounded me just as much,and left me flattened out as if the clocktower of Saragossa had fallen on top of me.
I lay there,stretched out,for more than a half-hour without being able to get up.I thought about my bad luck and that the strength of that irregular clergyman had been used so badly.He would have been better off serving under His Highness,the King,than living from alms for the poor--although they aren't even good for that since they're so lazy.The Emperor,Charles V,pointed this out when the General of the Franciscans offered him twenty-two-thousand friars,who wouldn't be over forty or under twenty-two years old,to fight in the war.The invincible Emperor answered that he didn't want them because he would have needed twenty-two-thousand pots stew every day to keep them alive,implying that they were more fit for eating than working.
God forgive me,but from that day to this I've hated those clergymen so much that whenever I see them they look to me like lazy drones or sieves that lift the meat out of the stew and leave the broth.I wanted to leave that work,but first I waited there that night,stretched out like a corpse waiting for his funeral.
