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My father was employed to superintend the operations of a water-mill on the river Tormes, from which I took my surname; and I had only reached my ninth year, when he was taken into custody for administering certain copious, but injudicious, bleedings to the sacks of customers.
"So good is it," replied Gines, "that a fig for 'Lazarillo de Tormes, and all of that kind that have been written, or shall be written compared with it: all I will say about it is that it deals with facts, and facts so neat and diverting that no lies could match them." "And how is the book entitled?" asked Don Quixote. "The 'Life of Gines de Pasamonte," replied the subject of it.
On the 14th, the British army concentrated on the field of their former glory, in consequence of a part of the French army having effected the passage of the river, above Alba de Tormes. On the 15th, the whole of the enemy's force having passed the river, a cannonade commenced early in the day; and it was the general belief that, ere night, a second battle of Salamanca would be recorded.
The first fiction of this class was the "Lazarillo de Tormes" of Mendoza, already spoken of, published in 1554, a bold, unfinished sketch of the life of a rogue from the very lowest condition of society. Forty-five years afterwards this was followed by the "Guzman de Alfarache" of Aleman, the most ample portraiture of its class to be found in Spanish literature.
We started after them at daylight next morning; and, crossing at a ford of the Tormes, we found their rear-guard, consisting of three regiments of infantry, with some cavalry and artillery, posted on a formidable height above the village of Serna.
As a poet he has been called the Spanish Sallust: as the author of the adventures of Lazarillo de Tormes he takes a high place among the lighter authors of romance; and as a patron of learning he will always be remembered for having enriched the Escorial with his transcripts from Mount Athos, and six chests of valuable MSS. which he received in return for ransoming from his captivity at Venice the son of Soliman the Magnificent.
One of his earliest works, "Lazarillo de Tormes," the auto-biography of a boy, little Lazarus, was written with the object of satirizing all classes of society under the character of a servant, who sees them in undress behind the scenes.
This place is famous in the ancient novels of Spain, of that class called Picaresque, or those devoted to the adventures of notorious scoundrels, the father of which, as also of all others of the same kind, in whatever language, is Lazarillo de Tormes. Cervantes himself has immortalized this strand in the most amusing of his smaller tales, La Ilustre Fregona.
The French, the next night, sent a portion of their force across the Tormes and, when daylight broke, the German cavalry, which had been placed to guard the ford, was seen retiring before 12,000 French infantry, with twenty guns.
A pendant to the picture Cervantes has given us of his first playgoings might, no doubt, have been often seen in the streets of Alcala at that time; a bright, eager, tawny-haired boy peering into a book-shop where the latest volumes lay open to tempt the public, wondering, it may be, what that little book with the woodcut of the blind beggar and his boy, that called itself "Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes, segunda impresion," could be about; or with eyes brimming over with merriment gazing at one of those preposterous portraits of a knight-errant in outrageous panoply and plumes with which the publishers of chivalry romances loved to embellish the title-pages of their folios.
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