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along on a small mule that wasn’t even very well tricked out.
    Scipio
: You should know, Berganza, that merchants in Seville—and not just in Seville—like to show off their power and wealth, not personally, but through their children, because then they shine even brighter in all that reflected glory. These burghers don’t go aroundshowboating, since they rarely bother with anything but their sales and contracts. But because ambition and riches thrive on showing off, they all lavish treasures on their children. They treat them, and raise them, as if they were princelings. Some even buy their children titles, and put heraldic crests on their chests to set them apart from the riffraff.
    Berganza
: It’s ambition all right, but it seems harmless enough, to try to better yourself without hurting anybody else.
    Scipio
: Rarely if ever do you find ambition that doesn’t hurt anyone.
    Berganza
: We already said we weren’t going to snipe.
    Scipio
: Who said anything about sniping?
    Berganza
: There, that just proves what I’ve always heard. Some unrepentant gossips will slander ten fine families and libel twenty good people, and if someone scolds him for it, he protests that he said nothing, and that if he said anything, he hasn’t said much—and that if he thought he’d offend anybody, he wouldn’t have said anything at all. Honestly, Scipio, anybody who hopes to talk for two hours together without once lapsing into gossip has his work cut out for him. Even though I’m an animal, I’ve only to put a few wordstogether before they swarm and flutter to my lips like flies to wine, and all of them scurrilous. And so I come back to what I said before: wrongdoing and calumny are human nature. We drink them in with our mothers’ milk. A child barely out of his swaddling clouts will raise a vengeful hand against anyone who denies him, and almost the first word out of his mouth is to call his nanny or mother a whore.
    Scipio
: True enough. I admit I went negative, and I’m sorry for it. It’s not as if you haven’t made a mistake or two yourself. No skin off my nose, as the young ones say, and enough with the sniping. Get on with your story. You were talking about how entitled the merchant’s sons looked when they went to the Jesuit school.
    Berganza
: All I do redounds to His glory, and though giving up gossip will be difficult, I have a system that I heard a real pottymouth once used. Repenting of his bad habit, every time he swore after vowing not to he gave his arm a pinch, or kissed the ground as penance for his guilt—yet he kept on swearing just the same. So for me, every time I violate my vow to you not to gossip, I’ll bite the tip of my tongue till it hurts, and remember my crime so as not to slip back.
    Scipio
: If you stick to that, the way you’re going you’ll probably bite your tongue clean off, so you couldn’t talk trash if you tried.
    Berganza
: At least I’ll do my part diligently, and the rest is up to heaven. As I was saying, one day my master’s sons left a haversack in the courtyard where I chanced to be. Since my master the butcher had taught me to carry a basket, I did likewise with the schoolbag and went after them, and resolved not to let go of it until I reached the school. Everything happened as I’d planned. My young masters saw me coming with the bag in my mouth, holding it gently by the ribbons, and ordered a page to take it from me. But I wouldn’t let him, nor did I turn it loose until I trotted into the classroom with it, which made all the students laugh. The older of my two masters approached me and, with what struck me as impeccable delicacy, I placed it in his hands and sat back down by the classroom door, studying the instructor intently as he gave a lesson to the class.
    I don’t know what it is about virtue that, understanding little or nothing about it, I still cherished seeing the love, the tenderness, the care and dedication he brought to the education of those boys,