Among the number of those by whom Rodaja, as I have said, was constantly surrounded, was an acquaintance of his own, who permitted himself to be saluted as the Señor Doctor, although Thomas knew well that he had not taken even the degree of bachelor. To him, therefore, he one day said, "Take care, gossip mine, that you and your title do not meet with the Fathers of the Redemption, for they will certainly take possession of your doctorship as being a creature unrighteously detained captive." "Let us behave well to each other, Señor Glasscase," said the other, "since you know that I am a man of high and profound learning." "I know you rather to be a Tantalus in the same," replied Rodaja; "for if learning reach high to you, you are never able to plunge into its depths." He was one day leaning against the stall of a tailor, who was seated with his hands before him, and to whom he said-- "Without doubt, Señor Maeso,[56] you are in the way to salvation." [56] Master. "From what symptom do you judge me to be so, Señor 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.