Oh, Scipio! what things I could tell you that I saw among these players, and two other companies to which I belonged; but I must leave them for another day, for it would be impossible to compress them within moderate limits.  All you have heard is nothing to what I could relate to you about these people and their ways, their work and their idleness, their ignorance and their cleverness, and other matters without end, which might serve to disenchant many who idolise these fictitious divinities.

Scip. I see clearly, Berganza, that the field is large; but leave it now, and go on.

Berg. I arrived with a company of players in this city of Valladolid, where they gave me a wound in an interlude that was near being the death of me.  I could not revenge myself then, because I was muzzled, and I had no mind to do so afterwards in cold blood; for deliberate vengeance argues a cruel and malicious disposition.  I grew weary of this employment, not because it was laborious, but because I saw in it many things which called for amendment and castigation; and, as it was not in my power to remedy them, I resolved to see them no more, but to take refuge in an abode of holiness, as those do who forsake their vices when they can no longer practise them; but better late than never.  Well, then, seeing you one night carrying the lantern with that good Christian Mahudes, I noticed how contented you were, how righteous and holy was your occupation.  Filled with honest emulation, I longed to follow your steps; and, with that laudable intention, I placed myself before Mahudes, who immediately elected me your companion, and brought me to this hospital.  What has occurred to me since I have been here would take some time to relate.  I will just mention a conversation I heard between four invalids, who lay in four beds next each other.  It will not take long to tell, and it fits in here quite pat.

Scip. Very well; but be quick, for, to the best of my belief, it cannot be far from daylight.

Berg. The four beds were at the end of the infirmary, and in them lay an alchemist, a poet, a mathematician, and one of those persons who are called projectors.

Scip. I recollect these good people well.

Berg. One afternoon, last summer, the windows being closed, I lay panting under one of their beds, when the poet began piteously to bewail his ill fortune.  The mathematician asked him what he complained of.

“Have I not good cause for complaint?” he replied.  “I have strictly observed the rule laid down by Horace in his Art of Poetry, not to bring to light any work until ten years after it has been composed.  Now, I have a work on which I was engaged for twenty years, and which has lain by me for twelve.  The subject is sublime, the invention perfectly novel, the episodes singularly happy, the versification noble, and the arrangement admirable, for the beginning is in perfect correspondence with the middle and the end.  Altogether it is a lofty, sonorous, heroic poem, delectable and full of matter; and yet I cannot find a prince to whom I may dedicate it—­a prince, I say, who is intelligent, liberal, and magnanimous.  Wretched and depraved age this of ours!”