and bring it here. No need for you to go, nephew,
let us stop and drink another glass of wine; the sooner we grow intimate
the better, nephew.'

It was thus that first I became acquainted with Senor Andres de Fonseca,
my benefactor, the strangest man whom I have ever known. Doubtless any
person reading this history would think that I, the narrator, was sowing
a plentiful crop of troubles for myself in having to deal with him,
setting him down as a rogue of the deepest, such as sometimes, for their
own wicked purposes, decoy young men to crime and ruin. But it was not
so, and this is the strangest part of the strange story. All that Andres
de Fonseca told me was true to the very letter.

He was a gentleman of great talent who had been rendered a little mad
by misfortunes in his early life. As a physician I have never met his
master, if indeed he has one in these times, and as a man versed in the
world and more especially in the world of women, I have known none to
compare with him. He had travelled far, and seen much, and he forgot
nothing. In part he was a quack, but his quackery always had a meaning
in it. He fleeced the foolish, indeed, and even juggled with astronomy,
making money out of their superstition; but on the other hand he did
many a kind act without reward. He would make a rich lady pay ten gold
pesos for the dyeing of her hair, but often he would nurse some poor
girl through her trouble and ask no charge; yes, and find her honest
employment after it. He who knew all the secrets of Seville never made
money out of them by threat of exposure, as he said because it would
not pay to do so, but really because though he affected to be a selfish
knave, at bottom his heart was honest.

For my own part I found life with him both easy and happy, so far as
mine could be quite happy. Soon I learned my role and played it well. It
was given out that I was the nephew of the rich old physician Fonseca,
whom he was training to take his place; and this, together with my
own appearance and manners, ensured me a welcome in the best houses of
Seville. Here I took that share of our business which my master could
not take, for now he never mixed among the fashion of the city. Money I
was supplied with in abundance so that I could ruffle it with the
best, but soon it became known that I looked to business as well as to
pleasure. Often and often during some gay ball or carnival, a lady would
glide up to me and ask beneath her