This so frightened me that I did not dare to transgress by begging. So you may imagine the abstinence of our house, and the sadness and silence of its inmates. We were two or three days without eating a mouthful or speaking a word. [Sidenote: Lazaro is kept alive by some kind shop-girls.] Some young women, sewers of cotton who made caps and lived near us, kept me alive, for I had made friends with them. From the little they had, they gave me enough to keep body and soul together. I was not so unhappy for myself as for my forlorn master, who in eight days never ate a mouthful, at least in the house. I do not know where he went or what he had to eat when he went out. I used to see him come back at noon, walking along the street with dignified carriage, thinner than a greyhound of good breed, and with regard to what touched the nonsense he called honour, he brought a straw of which we had not enough in the house. [Sidenote: Master and boy in a miserable and starving condition.] Coming to the door he would grind his teeth with nothing between them, complaining all the time of his bad lodging and saying: “It is a bad thing to see, and a most unlucky place to have to live in, and while we have to be here it will always be wretchedly sad. We have got to endure it, but I wish that this month was over, so that we might leave it.” [Sidenote: The esquire brings home a real, but bemoans his fate.] Being in this miserable and starving condition, one day, I know not through what good-fortune or chance, my poor master became possessed of a real. He came to the house with it, as delighted as if he had got all the riches of Venice, and smiling at me with a very joyous expression, he said: “Take it, Lazaro, for God has at length begun to open His hand. Go to the market for bread, meat, and wine, for we will break the Devil’s eye. I would further have you to know that I have taken another house, and that we shall not have to be in this wretched one for more than another month. May it be accursed, and he who placed the first tile to build it! O Lord! how have I lived here! Scarcely a drop of wine have I drunk nor a morsel of bread have I eaten, nor have I ever had any rest here, and it looks so sad and forbidding. Go and return quickly, for to-day we will eat like counts.” I took the jug and the real, and giving speed to my feet, I began to run up the street to the market, very joyful and contented. But of what avail if evil fortune always brought anxiety with my joy. So it was on this occasion.