A muleteer who heard this, for all kinds of people were continually listening to him, said aloud, “There is little or nothing that you can say of us, Senor Phial, for we are people of great worth, and very useful servants to the commonwealth.”  To which the man of glass replied, “The honour of the master exalts the honour of the servant.  You, therefore, who call those who hire your mules your masters, see whom you serve, and what honour you may borrow from them; for your employers are some of the dirtiest rubbish that this earth endures.

“Once, when I was not a man of glass, I was travelling on a mule which I had hired, and I counted in her master one hundred and twenty-one defects, all capital ones, and all enemies to the human kind.  All muleteers have a touch of the ruffian, a spice of the thief, and a dash of the mountebank.  If their masters, as they call those they take on their mules, be of the butter-mouthed kind, they play more pranks with them than all the rogues of this city could perform in a year.  If they be strangers, the muleteers rob them; if students, they malign them; if monks, they blaspheme them; but if soldiers, they tremble before them.  These men, with the sailors, the carters, and the arrieros or pack carriers, lead a sort of life which is truly singular, and belongs to themselves alone.

“The carter passes the greater part of his days in a space not more than a yard and a half long, for there cannot be much more between the yoke of his mules and the mouth of his cart.  He is singing for one half of his time, and blaspheming the other; and if he have to drag one of his wheels out of a hole in the mire, he is more aided, as it might seem, by two great oaths than by three strong mules.

“The mariners are a pleasant people, but little like those of the towns, and they can speak no other language than that used in ships.  When the weather is fine they are very diligent, but very idle, when it is stormy.  During the tempest they order much and obey little.  Their ship, which is their mess-room, is also their god, and their pastime is the torment endured by sea-sick passengers.

“As to the mule-carriers, they are a race which has taken out a divorce from all sheets, and has married the pack-saddle.  So diligent and careful are these excellent men, that to save themselves from losing a day, they will lose their souls.  Their music is the tramp of a hoof; their sauce is hunger; their matins are an exchange of abuse and bad words; their mass is—­to hear none at all.”

While speaking thus, Rodaja stood at an apothecary’s door, and turning to the master of the shop, he said, “Your worship’s occupation would be a most salutary one if it were not so great an enemy to your lamps.”

“Wherein is my trade an enemy to my lamps?” asked the apothecary.