In this way, after a couple of tries, I usually found myself staying in the house. I did what it took, they loved me well, and nobody ever sent me away. It was always I who took my leave—or, to say it better, I’d just leave. And I found a master I’d still be serving, if bad luck hadn’t pursued me.

Scipio: All that’s just how I used to buddy up to the masters I’ve had. It’s like we can read each other’s thoughts.

Berganza: Since we have experiences like these in common, if I’m not deceived, I’ll tell you more in time, as I’ve promised. But listen to what happened to me after I left the flock in the keeping of those no-accounts.

I returned to Seville, as I said, which is a sanctuary for the poor and a refuge for the rejected. Despite its grandeur, it welcomes the lowly, and doesn’t fawn over the great. I planted myself at the door of a fine merchant’s house, paid my usual respects, and before long I was staying there. They took me in, but kept me tied behind the door by day and turned me loose at night. I served with great care and devotion. I barked at strangers, and growled at anyone I didn’t know. I didn’t sleep at night, what with visiting the stables, going up on the roof, and making myself an all-purpose sentry for the house and its neighbors. My master was so thankful for my faithful service that he ordered me treated well and given a ration of bread and the bones from his table, together with scraps from the kitchen. I played grateful and jumped shamelessly when I saw him, especially when he came in from outside. I made such a show of hopping around and rejoicing that my master ordered me turned loose day and night. As soon as I got my freedom, of course, I bounded up and ran circles around him—but without ever touching him with my paws. I had remembered the fable of Aesop about the donkey who was such an ass that he wanted to nuzzle his master the same way a puppy does, and earned a pulverizing pounding.

The moral of the story is that the graces and airs of some aren’t always becoming in others. The fool may caper, the jester strike poses and leap, the rakehell bray or imitate the song of the birds. The lowly man who cares to can ape the gestures and actions of animals, but the highborn man, to whom none of these hijinks can do credit, should refrain.

Scipio: Enough already! Get on with it, Berganza. I get the idea.

Berganza: Would that those I could help understood me as you do. I don’t know where I get such a sweet nature, but it weighs on me when I see a gentleman act vulgarly, and pride himself on his cardplaying and crapshooting and his skill on the dance floor. A gentleman I know once bragged that he’d stitched thirty-two paper flowers against a crepe backdrop to decorate a memorial monument. He made such a big deal out of these displays, taking his friends to admire them, that you’d think he was showing off the captured pennants and spoils of the enemy adorning the tombs of his ancestors.

Anyway, this merchant had two sons, one twelve and the other almost fourteen, who studied grammar with the Jesuits. They went around in high style, attended by a tutor and valets who carried their satchels and books. Seeing them with such an entourage, in sedan chairs if the sun shone and a coach if it rained, made me think about how simply their father went to the Exchange to transact his business. He brought no attendant but a black servant, and sometimes poked 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 around showboating, 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.