In the mornings my master went out to take the air in the streets with the same satisfied look, leaving poor Lazaro with the head of a wolf. I often reflected on my misfortune that, escaping from the evil masters I had served, and seeking to better myself, I should have found one who not only did not maintain me, but whom I had to support. With all that I liked him well enough, seeing that he could not do better. My feeling was rather of sorrow than of enmity. Often I fared ill in bringing to the house that with which he might be satisfied. [Sidenote: Lazaro examines the esquire’s clothes, and finds nothing.] One morning the sad esquire got out of bed in his shirt and went up to the roof of the house. I quickly searched the hose and doublet at the head of the bed, and found a small purse of velvet, but there had not been so much as a blanca in it for many a day. “This man,” I said to myself, “is really poor, and cannot give what he has not got. The avaricious blind man and the ill-conditioned clergyman, may God reward them both! nearly killed me with hunger, the one with a kiss on the hand, the other with a deceitful tongue. Those it is right for me to detest, but for this poor man to have a tender feeling.” God is my witness that even now when I meet with any one dressed like this, and walking with the same pompous air, it makes me sad to think that he might be suffering what I saw my poor master suffer. [Sidenote: Lazaro has a kindly feeling for his third master.] With all his poverty I liked serving him; but not the other two masters. I only felt some discontent, for I should have liked him not to be quite so proud, and to have lowered his pretensions just a little when his necessities were so great. But it seems to me that it is a well-established rule among such people to march with their caps well cocked, though they have not a blanca to their names. The Lord have mercy on those who have to die of this disease! [Sidenote: Begging prohibited.] I was in this condition, passing the life I have described, when my ill-luck again began to pursue me. In that land the year was one which only yielded a bad harvest, so the municipal authorities resolved that all mendicants should leave the town; with the addition that any who remained after four days should be punished by whipping. Then the law took effect, and there were processions of poor people being whipped down the four streets.