We men are like barnyard hens:if we want to do something good we shout it out and cackle about it;but if it's something bad,we don't want anybody to find out so they won't stop us from doing what we shouldn't.I went to see one of my friends,and I found three of them there together;because after I had come into money,they multiplied like flies.I told them what I wanted to do--go back to my wife and get away from wagging tongues because "Better certain evil than doubtful good."They painted a black picture to me and said I was spineless and that I didn't have a brain in my body because the woman I wanted to live with was a whore,a hussy,a trollop,a slut,and,finally,a devil's mule.(That's what they call a priest's mistress in Toledo.)
My friends said so many things to me and gave me so many arguments that I decided not to beg or even ask my wife.When my good friends (damned friends,anyway)saw that their arguments and advice had done their work,they went even further.They said they were advising me,because I was such a good friend,to remove the spots and the stains on my honor and to defend it,since it had fallen into such bad times,by suing the archpriest and my wife.They said it wouldn't cost so much as a penny since they were lawyers.
One of them was an attorney for lost causes,and he offered me a thousand pieces of silver from the profits.The other one was more knowledgeable because he was a prostitutes'lawyer,and he told me that if he were in my shoes he wouldn't take less than two thousand.The third one assured me (and since he was a bumbailiff,he knew what he was talking about)that he had seen other lawsuits that were less clear,that had brought the people who began them an enormous amount of money.Furthermore,he thought that at the first confrontation that Domine Baccalaureus would fill my hands and anoint the lawyers'to make us withdraw the lawsuit,and that he would beg me to go back to my wife.So I would get more honor and profit from it than if I went back to her on my own.
My friends commended this business to me highly,luring me on with high hopes.I was taken in right then.I didn't know what to say to their sophist arguments,although it really seemed to me that it would be better to forgive and forget than to go to extremes,and that I should carry out the most difficult of God's commandments (the fourth one),which is to love your enemies--especially since my wife had never acted like an enemy to me.In fact,it was because of her that I had begun to rise in the world and become known by many people who would point at me and say,"There goes that nice fellow,Lazaro."
Because of my wife I was somebody.If the daughter that the archdeacon said wasn't mine,was or wasn't,only God,who looks into men's hearts,knows.It could be that he was fooled just the way I was.And it could happen that some of the people who are reading and laughing over my simpleness so hard they slobber on their beards might be raising the children of some ignorant priest.They might be working,sweating,and striving to leave the very ones rich who will impoverish their honor,and all the time they are so sure that if there is any woman in the world who is faithful,it's their wife.And even your name,dear reader--Lord Whitehall--might really come from Wittol.
But I don't want to destroy anyone's illusions.All these reflections still weren't enough,so I took out a lawsuit against the archpriest and my wife.Since there was ready money,they had them in jail inside of twenty-four hours:him in the archbishop's prison and her in the public one.The lawyers told me not to worry about the money that that business could cost me since it would all come out of that priest's hide.So,to make it even worse for the priest and to raise the costs,I gave whatever they asked me.They were walking around diligent,solicitous,and energetic.When they smelled my cash,they were like flies on honey:they didn't take a step in vain.
In less than a week the lawsuit had moved far ahead,and my pocketbook had lost as much ground.The evidence was gathered easily because the constables who arrested my wife and the archpriest caught them in the act and had taken them off to jail in their nightshirts,the way
