his hands before him, and to whom he said--

"Without doubt, Senor Maeso,[56] you are in the way to salvation."

[56] Master.

"From what symptom do you judge me to be so, Senor Doctor?" inquired the
tailor.

"From the fact that, as you have nothing to do, so you have nothing to
lie about, and may cease lying, which is a great step."

Of the shoemakers he said, that not one of that trade ever performed his
office badly; seeing that if the shoe be too narrow, and pinches the
foot, the shoemaker says, "In two hours it will be as wide as an
alpargate;" or he declares it right that it should be narrow, since the
shoe of a gentleman must needs fit closely; and if it be too wide, he
maintains that it still ought to be so, for the ease of the foot, and
lest a man should have the gout.

Seeing the waiting-maid of an actress attending her mistress, he said
she was much to be pitied who had to serve so many women, to say nothing
of the men whom she also had to wait on; and the bystanders requiring to
know how the damsel, who had but to serve one, could be said to wait on
so many, he replied, "Is she not the waiting-maid of a queen, a nymph,
a goddess, a scullery-maid, and a shepherdess? besides that she is also
the servant of a page and a lackey? for all these, and many more, are in
the person of an actress."

Some one asked Rodaja, who had been the happiest man in the world? To
which he answered--"_Nemo_, seeing that _Nemo novit patrem--Nemo sine
crimine vivit--Nemo sua sorte contentus--Nemo ascendit in coelum_," &c.
&c.

Of the fencing masters he said, that they were professors of an art
which was never to be known when it was most wanted, since they
pretended to reduce to mathematical demonstrations, which are
infallible, the angry thoughts and movements of a man's adversaries.

To such men as dyed their beards, Rodaja always exhibited a particular
enmity; and one day observing a Portuguese, whose beard he knew to be
dyed, in dispute with a Spaniard, to whom he said, "I swear by the beard
that I wear on my face," Rodaja called out to him, "Halt there, friend;
you should not say that you _wear_ on your face, but that you dye on
your face."[57] To another, whose beard had been streaked by an
imperfect dye, Doctor Glasscase said, "Your beard is of the true
dust-coloured pieball." He related, on another occasion, that a certain
damsel, discreetly conforming to the will of her parents, had agreed to
marry an old man wit