She motioned for me to wait, came down to the street door, and called to me again. I approached her to see what she wanted, namely to leave the treasures of the basket and put an old moccasin in their place. “Sweets to the sweet,” I said to myself. After helping herself to the meat, she said to me, “Get along, Gavilan, or whatever you call yourself, and you tell your master Nicky Flatnose never to trust an animal. From the wolf’s mane, trust only a hair—and even that, only when he’s dead.” I would’ve reclaimed what she took, but I didn’t want to sully those clean white hands with my dirty, bloodstained mouth.

Scipio: That’s what I like to hear. Beauty—there’s no arguing with it.

Berganza: And I didn’t. I went back to my master without the morsels, but with the moccasin instead. At first he just thought I’d made good time, but then he saw the shoe, got the joke, pulled out one of his shivs and went for me. If I hadn’t ducked, you wouldn’t be hearing this story—let alone the many others I plan to tell you. I made tracks and, taking to the road behind the San Bernardo district and through the fields, I struck out for any country where fate cared to carry me.

That night I slept under the open sky, but the next day fortune sent a flock of sheep my way. The minute I saw them, I knew I’d found my station in life, for it’s the proper and natural chore of dogs to guard livestock—a duty that bespeaks great virtue, because it shelters and protects the meek and defenseless from the high and mighty. I had hardly seen one of the three shepherds guarding these animals when he called to me, saying “Here, boy! Come here!”

I, who wanted nothing else, went up to him with head down and tail wagging. He patted my flank, opened my mouth, felt around in it, looked at my teeth, estimated my age, and told the other shepherds that I had all the signs of pedigree. That’s when the rancher rode up on a sorrel horse with short stirrups, carrying a lance and shield. “What dog is this,” he asked the shepherd, “who looks so sharp?”

“You can count on that, sir,” answered the shepherd, “because I’ve examined him thoroughly, and there’s no doubt he promises to be a great dog. He just trotted up and I don’t know whose he is, though I know he’s not from any flock around here.”

“Well if that’s how it is,” said the rancher, “put Leoncillo’s collar on him, that dog it was that died, and give him the same ration as the others. Look after him, so he’ll get to like the flock and stay with it.”

And with that, he left. The shepherd put a collar around my neck with sharp spikes, but first he gave me a bowl full of crusts all sopping with milk. He also gave me a name: Barcino.

There I was, fat and happy with my second master and my new responsibilities. I watched the fold carefully and diligently except at siesta time, which I used to spend in the shade of some tree or bank, or a ravine or an orchard, next to one of the creeks that ran all through there. I didn’t pass these hours of tranquility idly, either. I occupied my memory by remembering many things, especially the life my old master and everyone like him led in the slaughterhouse, always jumping at the peevish pleasures of their mistresses. Oh, what couldn’t I tell you now of all I learned from my master’s lady! But interrupt me, because I wouldn’t have you think me a windbag or a gossip.

Scipio: A great old poet once said that, in this world, it’s hard not to write satire. So I’ll let you snipe—a little. But shed light, not blood. What I mean is, just make your point and don’t kill anyone while you’re at it. If it’s going to draw blood, invective is worth avoiding, even if it makes people laugh. You’re no fool if you can get along without it.

Berganza: I’ll take your advice, but I hope with all my heart that when the time comes for you to tell me your stories, you—who are such an expert at spotting the errors I commit in telling mine—will surely tell them in a way that informs while delighting.

But, to follow the twisted thread of my story, I was saying that in the silence and solitude of my siestas I decided it isn’t true, what I’ve heard said of the shepherd’s life—at least, of the shepherds’ lives my old master’s girlfriend would read about in books when I went to her house. These all went on about shepherds and shepherdesses, and said that they spent their lives singing and playing on exotic instruments. I’d stick around to hear her read, and she’d go on and on about how the shepherd of Anfriso sang threnodies to the peerless Belisarda, and in all the mountains of Arcadia, there wasn’t a tree whose trunk he hadn’t reclined against to sing, from the time the sun left the arms of Aurora in the morning until Thetis embraced him at night.