The Visions of Dom Francisco de Quevedo VillegasQuevedo, Francisco de
General
The Visions of Dom Francisco de Quevedo Villegas
Quevedo, Francisco de
Satire; Spanish literature -- Translations into English
“I hope,” said I to my guide, “that the attorneys shall have your good
word too.” “Yes, yes, ye need not doubt it,” said the old man, “for your
attorney and your catchpole always hunt in couples. The attorney draws
the information, and has all his forms ready, so that ’tis no more then
but to fill up the blanks, and away to the jail with the delinquent; if
there be anything to be gotten ’tis not a halfpenny matter, whether the
party be guilty or innocent: give but an attorney pen, ink, and paper,
and let him alone for witnesses. In case of an examination, he has the
grace not to insist too much upon plain and naked truth; but to set down
only what makes for his purpose, and then when they come to signing, to
read over in the deponent’s sense (for his memory is good) what he has
written in his own; and by this means, the cause goes on as he pleases.
To prevent this villainy, it were well, if the examiners were as well
sworn to write the truth as the witnesses are to speak it. And yet there
are some honest men of all sorts but among the attorneys; the very
calling does by the honest catchpoles, marshal’s men, and their fellows,
as the sea by the dead: it may entertain them for a while, but in a very
short space it spews them up again.”
The good man would have proceeded, if he had not been taken off by the
rattling of a gilt coach, wherein was a courtier that was blown up as big
as pride and vanity could make him. He sat stiff and upright, as if he
had swallowed a stake; and made it his glory to show himself in that
posture: it would have hurt his eyes, to have exchanged a glance with
anything that was vulgar, and therefore he was very sparing of his looks.
He had a deep laced ruff on, that was right Spanish, which he wore erect,
and stiff starched, that a man would have thought he had carried his head
in a paper-lanthorn. He was a great studier of set faces, and much
affected with looking politic and big. But, for his arms and body, he
had utterly lost or forgotten the use of them: for he could neither bow
nor move his hat to any man that saluted him; no, nor so much as turn
from one side to the other; but sat as if he had been boxed up, like a
Bartlemew-baby. After this magnificent statue, followed a swarm of gaudy
butterfly-lackeys: and his lordship’s company in the coach was a buffoon
and a parasite. “Oh blessed prince!” said I, “to live at this rate of
ease and splendour, and to have the world at will! What a glorious train
is that! Beyond all doubt, there never was a great fortune better
bestowed.” With that, the old man took me up, and told me that the
judgment I had made upon this occasion, from one end to the other, was
all dotage and mistake; save only, when I said he had the world at will:
“and in that,” says he, “you have reason; for what is the world but
labour, vanity, and folly; which is likewise the composition and
entertainment of this cavalier.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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