When we were at the offertory not a single blanca was dropped into the shell without being registered by him. He kept one eye on the congregation and the other on my hands, moving his eyes about as if they were quicksilver. He knew exactly how many blancas had been given, and as soon as the offertory was over, he took the shell from me and put it on the altar. During all the time I lived, or rather was dying in his service, I never was master of a single blanca. I never brought a blanca worth of wine from a tavern, but it was put into his chest to last for a week. To conceal his extreme stinginess he said to me, “Look here, boy! Priests have to be very frugal in eating and drinking, and for this reason I do not feed like other people.” But he lied shamefully. For at meetings and funerals where we had to say prayers and responses, and where he could get food at the expense of others, he ate like a wolf and drank more than a proposer of toasts. [Sidenote: Lazaro prayed for the deaths of sick people, for the sake of the funeral feasts.] And why do I speak of funerals? God forgive me! for I never was an enemy to the human race except on those occasions. Then we could eat well, and I wished, and even prayed to God that He would kill some one every day. When we gave the Sacraments to the sick, especially extreme unction, the priest was called upon to say prayers for those who were present. I was certainly not the last in prayer, for with all my heart I besought the Lord that He would take the sick man to Himself. If any one recovered I devoted him to the devil a thousand times. He who died received many benedictions from me, yet the number of persons who died during the whole time I was there, which was over six months, only amounted to twenty. I verily believed that I killed them, or rather that they died in answer to my prayers, the Lord seeing how near death I was, and that their deaths gave me life. But there was no remedy, for if on the days of the funerals I lived, on the days when no one died I was starving, and I felt it all the more. So that there seemed to be no rest for me but in death; and I often desired it for myself, as well as for others. I frequently thought of leaving my penurious master, but two things detained me. The first was that I feared my legs would not carry me, so reduced was I by starvation. The other was the consideration that I had had two masters. The first starved me, the second brought me to death’s door, and a third might finish me. It appeared that any change might be for the worse. [Sidenote: Lazaro is saved from starvation by an angel of a locksmith.]