But even without searching, I always find her in my thoughts. Wherever I am, I have only to look in the mirror to see my disgrace beneath my very eyes.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” the scholar said, “except to quote this snatch of Petrarch:

Che qui prende diletto di far frode,
Non s’ha di lamentar s’altro l’inganna.

“That is to say, ‘The liar can’t well feel aggrieved/When he finds himself deceived.’ ”

“I’m not complaining,” answered the ensign, “just feeling sorry for myself. Even when the sinner at last empties himself of excuses, the punishment still burns. I know better than you that I got a dose of my own medicine, trying to rook her and getting rooked myself. But like all our feelings, self-pity is beyond my control.

“So, to get to the heart of this sorry tale—since that’s what it is—I heard that Doña Estefanía had run off with that cousin from our wedding, who was really an old flame of long standing. After getting all she had to give and then some, I had no wish to go after her.

“I changed my lodgings—and, eventually, my looks. My eyebrows and lashes started to fall out. Soon enough the hair on my head followed and I went bald before my time. My scalp shone as empty as my pockets, because I had nothing either to comb or to spend. My illness and my indigence each compounded the other. Honor is no match for poverty, which drives some to the hanging tree and some to the hospital, and makes others swallow their pride and beg for something more nutritious at their enemies’ doors. Want is one of the greatest woes that can befall some unfortunate man. So, rather than pawn my clothes to pay for private treatment and then have to go naked if I recover, I entered Resurrection Hospital and took my forty sweatbaths. They say I’ll get well, that I only need to take care of myself. I’ve got my sword, and I leave the rest to God.”

Here Peralta renewed his friendly invitations, marveling at all the things he’d heard.

“If you find what little I’ve told you surprising,” the ensign said, “what will you say to the other things I haven’t got around to yet, which defy natural law and imagination both? I can only tell you that it makes up for all the misadventures that landed me in the hospital, because only here did I see what I’m about to tell you now, that nobody including you will ever believe.” The ensign’s preambles piqued Peralta’s curiosity so much that he dearly wanted to hear, in detail, everything there was to tell.

“Surely you’ve seen,” the ensign began, “the two guard dogs who go around at night carrying lanterns for the monks, to give them light while they collect alms?”

“Yes …?” Peralta led him.

“You’ve also seen or heard that, if anybody dispenses their charity out a window and onto the ground, the dogs immediately bring their light and help look? They also stop on their own before windows where they usually receive alms. But despite all this tameness—to the point where they’re more like lambs than dogs—they are lions in the hospital, guarding the place with great care and vigilance.”

“I’ve heard all this,” said Peralta, “but it doesn’t turn my world upside-down. Should it?”

“What I’m about to tell you will,” answered the ensign. “Even if it sounds bizarre, you have to try to believe it. One night, the second to last of my treatment, I heard and saw with my own eyes—well, almost saw—those two dogs, Scipio and Berganza, stretched on some old matting behind my bed. Then, in the middle of the night, lying awake in the dark thinking of my past adventures and current travails, I heard voices nearby. I listened closely to see if I could make out who was speaking, and what about. Soon enough I deciphered both and I knew, to a certainty, that the dogs were doing the talking.”

Campuzano had hardly finished the sentence when the scholar leaped to his feet and cried, “That does it, señor Campuzano! Up to now I couldn’t decide whether to believe what you’ve told me about your marriage, but after all this about hearing dogs talk, I’ve made up my mind not to believe you any farther than I can throw you. Sweet Jesus, ensign, don’t ever repeat this nonsense to anybody except a friend like me.”

“I’m not so ignorant,” replied Campuzano, “that I don’t know animals can’t talk without some miracle. Even if mockingbirds, mynahs and parrots appear to talk, I know they only repeat the words they’ve learned by rote, and only then because they happen to have tongues like ours to pronounce them. But they can’t talk, let alone talk back, with the thoughtful exchange of views that those dogs managed. Much as I heard them afterward, I scarcely believe it myself. I listened, made notes, and finally wrote it all down verbatim—wide awake, with all five God-given senses working—and still I’d rather write it off as a dream. This transcript here will make the case better than I can that what I saw there was real. Their topics were many and varied, more what you’d expect from a pontiff than a mastiff. So, since I couldn’t have invented their remarks myself, I reluctantly have to believe that this was no dream, and this canine conversation really happened.”

“Odds bodkins!” the scholar exclaimed.