Never lose hope no matter how miserable you are,because when you least expect it God will open the doors and windows of His mercy and will show that nothing is impossible for Him,and that He has the knowledge,the ability,and the desire to change the plans of the wicked into healthful,beneficial remedies for those who trust in Him.Those brutal executioners decided that Death wasn't joking (it seldom does),so they put me in a sack,threw me across the back of a donkey like a wineskin--or rather a waterskin,since I was full of water up to my mouth--and started out along the road of Cuesta de Carmen.And they were more sorrowful than if they were going to bury the father who gave them life and the mother who bore them.
It was my good fortune that when they put me on the mule,I was belly side down.Since my head was hanging downward,I began to spew out water as if they had lifted the floodgates on a dam,or as if I were a drop hammer.I came to,and when I caught my breath I realized that I was out of the water and out of that blasted hairy mess.I didn't know where I was or where they were taking me.I only heard them saying,"For our own safety we'll have to find a very deep well so they won't discover him so soon."Then I saw the handwriting on the wall and guessed what was happening.I knew that their bark could be no worse than their bite,and when I heard people approaching I called,"Help,help,for God's sake!"
The people I had noticed were the night watch,and they ran up when they heard my cries,their swords out and ready.They searched the sack,and they found poor Lazaro--a drenched haddock.Body and soul,they took us all off to jail on the spot:the fishermen were crying to see themselves imprisoned,and I was laughing to find myself free.
They put them in a cell and me in a bed.The next morning they took our statements.The fishermen confessed that they had carried me all over Spain,but they said that they had done it thinking I was a fish and that they had asked for the Inquisition's permission to do it.I told them the truth of the matter:how those fiends had tied me up so that I couldn't make a peep.They had the archpriest and my good Bridget come to testify as to whether or not I really was the Lazaro of Tormes I said I was.My wife came in first,and she looked me over very carefully,and then said it was true that I did look something like her good husband,but she didn't think I was him because even though I had been an animal,I was more like a drone than a fish,and more like a bullock than a tuna.After saying this she made a deep bow and left.
The attorney for those hangmen said I should be burned because I was undoubtedly a monster,and he was going to prove it.
I thought to myself:What if there really is an enchanter following me and changing me into anything he likes?
The judges told him to be quiet.Then the archpriest came in.He saw me looking as pale and wrinkled as an old lady's belly,and he said he didn't recognize my face or my figure.I refreshed his memory about some past things (many of them secret)that had happened between us;I especially told him to think back on the night he came to my bed naked and said that he was afraid of a ghost in his bedroom,and then crawled into bed between my wife and me.So that I wouldn't go on with these reminders,he confessed that I really was his good friend and servant,Lazaro.
The trial ended with the testimony of the captain who had taken me with him from Toledo.He was one of those who escaped the storm in a skiff,and he confessed that I was,in fact,his servant Lazaro.The time and place the fishermen said they had fished me out supported that.The judges sentenced them to two hundred whippings apiece and the confiscation of their belongings:a third of it would be given to the King,a third to the prisoners,and a third to Lazaro.They found them with two thousand pieces of silver,two mules,and a cart,and after the costs and expenditures were paid I got two hundred pieces of silver.The sailors were plucked and skinned,and I was rich and happy because I had never in my life been the owner of so much money at one time.
I went to the house of a friend of mine,and after I had downed a few pitchers of wine to get rid of the bad taste of the water and was feeling mellow,I began to strut around like a count and to eat like a king;I was esteemed by my friends,feared by my enemies,and wooed by everyone.My past troubles seemed like a dream to me,my present luck was like a port of leisure,and my future hopes a paradise of delights.Hardships humiliate,prosperity makes a man haughty.For the time those two hundred silver pieces lasted,if the King had called me his cousin I would have taken it as an insult.
