Cómo Lázaro se asentó con un clérigo, y de las cosas que con él pasó

     Otro día, no padeciendo me estar allí seguro, me fui a un lugar que llaman Maqueda,¹ adonde me toparon mis pecados con un clérigo, que llegando a pedir limosna, me preguntó si sabía ayudar a misa. Yo dije que sí, como era verdad, que aunque maltratado, mil cosas buenas me mostró el pecador del ciego, y una de ellas fue ésta. Finalmente, el clérigo me recibió por suyo.
     Escapé del trueno y di en el relámpago, porque era el ciego para con éste un Alejandro Magno,² con ser la misma avaricia, como he contado. No digo más sino que toda la laceria del mundo estaba encerrada en éste: no sé si de su cosecha era o lo había anexado con el hábito de clerecía.
     Él tenía un arcaz viejo y cerrado con su llave, la cual traía atada con un agujeta del paletoque. En viniendo el bodigo de la iglesia, por su mano era luego allí lanzado, y tornada a cerrar el arca. Y en toda la casa no había ninguna cosa de comer, como suele estar en otras: algún tocino colgado al humero, algún queso puesto en alguna tabla o en el armario, algún canastillo con algunos pedazos de pan que de la mesa sobran. Me parece a mí que aunque de ello no aprovechará, con la vista de ello me consolará.
     Solamente había una horca de cebollas, y tras la llave, en una cámara en lo alto de la casa. De éstas tenía yo de ración una para cada cuatro días, y cuando le pedía la llave para ir por ella, si alguno estaba presente, echaba mano al falsopeto, y, con gran continencia, la desataba y me la daba diciendo:
     -Toma, y vuélvela luego, y no hagas sino golosinar.
     Como se debajo de ella estuvieran todas las conservas de Valencia, con no haber en la dicha cámara, como dije, maldita la otra cosa que las
 

How Lázaro served a priest and what became of him there


     The following day, it not seeming to be safe there, I went to a place they call Maqueda,¹ where my sins bumped me against a priest who, upon my arrival to beg alms, asked me if I knew how to assist at mass. I said yes, as it was the truth, for even though mistreated by that sinner of a blind man, he had shown me a thousand useful things, one of them being this. Ultimately, the priest took me for his own.
     I escaped the thunder and was struck by the lightning, because compared to this one in miserliness, the blind man, as I have described him, was an Alexander the Great.²I won't say more, except that all the world's wretchedness was locked up in him: I don't know if it was of his own invention or he had annexed it with the cleric's habit.
     He had an old chest closed with his key, which he wore tied with a lace to his scapular. The holy bread in coming from the church was thrown straightaway into there out of his own hand and the lock turned to close the chest. And in all the house there wasn't anything to eat, as is customarily in others: Some bacon hung in the chimney, some cheese put on a board or in the cupboard, some little basket with some pieces of bread that were left over from the table. It seemed to me that although I wouldn't benefit from any of it, the look of it would have consoled me.
     There was only a string of onions, and those in an attic room behind lock and key. From these I had a ration of one every four days and, when I asked him for the key in order to go for it, if someone were present, he put his hand into to the smock and, with an air of great reserve, untied it and gave it to me saying:
     "Take, and return it at once, and do nothing but relish the tidbit."
     As if beneath them might be all the sweetmeats of Valencia, whereas there wasn't, as I said, another accursed thing in that aforesaid room except