h a white beard, who, on the evening before his
marriage was to take place, thought fit to have his beard dyed, and
whereas he had taken it from the sight of his betrothed as white as
snow, he presented it at the altar with a colour blacker than that of
pitch.

[57] Here Rodaja spoke mockingly, an impure Portuguese, and not Spanish
(_olhay_, _homen_, _naon_, _digais_, _teno_, _sino tino_). The spirit of
the remark (as in some other passages omitted for that reason) consists
in a play on words resembling each other in sound, though not in sense,
and is necessarily lost in translation.

Seeing this, the damsel turned to her parents and requested them to give
her the spouse they had promised, saying that she would have him, and no
other.

They assured her, that he whom she there saw was the person they had
before shewn her, and given her for her spouse: but she refused to
believe it, maintaining, that he whom her parents had given her was a
grave person, with a white beard: nor was she, by any means, to be
persuaded that the dyed man before her was her betrothed, and the
marriage was broken off.

Towards Duennas he entertained as great a dislike as towards those who
dyed their beards--uttering wonderful things respecting their falsehood
and affectation, their tricks and pretences, their simulated scruples
and their real wickedness,--reproaching them with their fancied maladies
of stomach, and the frequent giddiness with which they were afflicted in
the head; nay, even their mode of speaking, was made the subject of his
censure; and he declared that there were more turns in their speech than
folds in their great togas and wide gowns; finally, he declared them
altogether useless, if not much worse.

Being one day much tormented by a hornet which settled on his neck, he
nevertheless refused to take it off, lest in seeking to catch the insect
he should break himself; but he still complained woefully of the sting.
Some one then remarked to him, that it was scarcely to be supposed he
would feel it much, since his whole person was of glass. But Rodaja
replied, that the hornet in question must needs be a slanderer, seeing
that slanderers were of a race whose tongues were capable of penetrating
bodies of bronze, to say nothing of glass.

A monk, who was enormously fat, one day passed near where Rodaja was
sitting, when one who stood by ironically remarked, that the father was
so reduced and consumptive, as scarcely to be cap