He next succeeded in obtaining the patronage of a pardoner who travelled from place to place selling indulgences and relics. On one occasion they stayed at an inn, where his master struck up a friendship with an alguazil, or constable. One night the pair sat late carousing, when a quarrel arose between them, and next day, as the pardoner was preaching in the church preparatory to selling his wares, the alguazil entered and denounced him as an impostor. The pardoner, with a great show of piety, prayed loudly that the heavenly powers would vindicate his character and would punish the alguazil, who immediately fell to the ground in the most dreadful convulsions. Some of the congregation prayed the pardoner that he would attempt some mitigation of the wrath of heaven upon his traducer, and the holy man stepped from the pulpit and laid a bull which he pretended he had received from the Pope upon the sufferer's forehead. The man instantly rose as if cured, and the people, convinced that a miracle had occurred, at once bought up the pardoner's entire stock. But the acute Lazarillo soon discovered that the pair had been in league with one another. The last master to whose service Lazarillo attached himself was the Arch-priest of Salvador, in whose service he flourished exceedingly, and one of whose servants he married. But scandal crept into his household, and with the death of his wife he found himself as poor as ever. Here the tale ends. It is impossible in such a brief sketch as this to do justice to the great degree of insight into the workings of the human heart which characterizes the authorship of this little novel, the first of its kind. Lazarillo de Tormes was the forerunner and exemplar of the entire school of the Picaresque novel, which at a later date became almost typical of Spanish fiction, and which gave rise to such masterpieces as Guzman de Alfarache, the Gil Blas of Le Sage, and the novels of Scarron, and the spirit of which to some extent was mirrored in our own Laurence Sterne; nor is its influence by any means defunct, as can readily be seen by reference to certain of the works of Mr Maurice Hewlett and Mr Jeffery Farnol. Guzman de Alfarache Mateo Aleman, the author of the great Picaresque romance of Guzman de Alfarache, was a native of Seville. Throwing up a Government appointment in early life, he crossed the sea to Mexico, where in 1609 he published a work on Spanish orthography and several treatises in Latin. But the effort which has gained for him the title of novelist was his Vita del Picaro Guzman de Alfarache, a work which has been translated into every European language from the date of its first appearance in 1599. Although written in the most correct and approved literary style, it is yet easy and familiar in manner, and is unrivalled in the picture it presents not only of the lowest grades of Castilian society, but of the more exclusive orders of life at the period in which he wrote.