The Dialogue of the Dogs by Miguel de Cervantes Read Free Book Online Page B

easy street to skid row.
    Berganza
: You have a point. Anyway, this constable used to hang out with a certain notary. They had fallen in with two hussies, more or less—really just less. It’s true they had pretty good features, but they lied, and sashayed around like harlots. These women served the constables as lures for their peculiar variety of landlocked fishing. They dressed so that anyone within a rifleshot would know them for loose women. They always kept an eye peeled for out-of-towners when the market fair came to Cadiz and Seville, and they reaped quite a harvest. Nary a Breton was safe from their attentions, and when these paragons of womanhood met up with such a greaseball, they’d alert the constable and the notary as to which inn they were bound for. Once thestrumpet got her mark upstairs, these legal eagles would burst in and arrest the lot of them on morals charges. Somehow, though, the victims never made it to jail, because they always bought their way off.
    It so happened that Colindres, the constable’s paramour, bewitched one Breton all the way from his bunions to his brilliantined hair. She engineered supper and a tryst at his inn, and gave the signal to her boyfriend. No sooner had she and the Breton disrobed than the constable, the notary, and two henchmen turned up. The lovers were interrupted, and the constable inflated the charges and ordered them to throw on their clothes, because he was running them in. The Breton scourged himself piteously. Overcome by mercy, the notary stepped in and, with much beseeching, argued their fine down to only one hundred
reales
. The Breton reached for the chamois breeches he’d put on a chair at the foot of the bed, where he had money to pay for his freedom, but the breeches weren’t there, nor could they be.
    You see, as soon I’d entered the suite, a scent like bacon had reached my nostrils and unstrung me completely. I followed the smell and found its source in a pocket of the breeches. What a hunk of gourmet ham I found there! To devour and savor it without making any noise, I dragged the pants out into the street. There I applied myself to the ham for all I was worth. When I came back to the room the Breton was exclaiming, in adulterated and bastardized, though still intelligible pidgin, that he wanted his pants back—and the fifty gold florins therein. The notary assumed that eitherColindres or the henchmen had lifted them, and the constable thought so too. He called them all aside, but nobody confessed to anything, and all hell promptly broke loose. Seeing what was happening, I trotted back into the street where I’d left the pants to bring them back, since what good was money to me? But I didn’t find them, because some lucky pedestrian had already helped himself.
    Seeing that the Breton didn’t have money for a bribe, the constable couldn’t wait, and prepared to take from the landlady what the Breton couldn’t cough up. He rang for her, and in she came half-naked. When she heard the yammering and complaining from the Breton and saw Colindres in the buff and wailing, the constable apoplectic, the notary not much happier, and the deputies pocketing everything that wasn’t nailed down, the landlady wasn’t exactly thrilled. Then the constable ordered her to put some clothes on and come with him to jail for running a house of ill repute.
    After that, it was off to the races! Voices rose, chaos mounted, and finally the landlady said: “Mister constable, mister notary, you can’t fool me. I see your whole scheme. You can keep your bullying and threats. Now shut your mouths and go with God. If not, by my faith, I’ll throw caution out the window and shout this whole story from the housetops. I know Colindres all too well, and I also know that for many months the constable has been her pimp. Don’t make me dwell on this. Just give the man back his moneyand let’s be reasonable, because I am an honorable woman, and my husband has his patent of