Scip. Let us proceed in this manner, friend Berganza:  to-night you shall relate the history of your life to me, and the perils through which you have passed to the present hour; and to-morrow night, if we still have speech, I will recount mine to you; for it will be better to spend the time in narrating our own lives than in trying to know those of others.

Berg. I have ever looked upon you, Scipio, as a discreet dog and a friend, and now I do so more than ever, since, as a friend, you desire to tell me your adventures and know mine; and, as a discreet dog, you apportion the time in which we may narrate them.  But first observe whether any one overhears us.

Scip. No one, I believe; since hereabouts there is a soldier going through a sweating-course; but at this time of night he will be more disposed to sleep than to listen to anything.

Berg. Since then we can speak so securely, hearken; and if I tire you with what I say, either check me or bid me hold my tongue.

Scip. Talk till dawn, or till we are heard, and I will listen to you with very great pleasure, without interrupting you, unless I see it to be necessary.

Berg. It appears to me that the first time I saw the sun was in Seville, in its slaughter-houses, which were outside the Puerta do la Carne; wence I should imagine (were it not for what I shall afterwards tell you) that my progenitors were some of those mastiff’s which are bred by those ministers of confusion who are called butchers.  The first I knew for a master, was one Nicholas the Pugnosed, a stout, thick-set, passionate fellow, as all butchers are.  This Nicholas taught me and other whelps to run at bulls in company with old dogs and catch them by the ears.  With great ease I became an eagle among my fellows in this respect.

Scip. I do not wonder, Berganza, that ill-doing is so easily learned, since it comes by a natural obliquity.

Berg. What can I say to you, brother Scipio, of what I saw in those slaughter-houses, and the enormous things that were done in them?  In the first place, you must understand that all who work in them, from the lowest to the highest, are people without conscience or humanity, fearing neither the king nor his justice; most of them living in concubinage; carrion birds of prey; maintaining themselves and their doxies by what they steal.  On all flesh days, a great number of wenches and young chaps assemble in the slaughtering place before dawn, all of them with bags which come empty and go away full of pieces of meat.  Not a beast is killed out of which these people do not take tithes, and that of the choicest and most savoury pickings.  The masters trust implicitly in these honest folk, not with the hope that they will not rob them (for that is impossible), but that they may use their knives with some moderation.  But what struck me as the worst thing of all, was that these butchers