DOÑA FORTUNA AND DON DINERO.[16]

DOÑA FORTUNA AND DON DINERO.[16]

FROM THE SPANISH OF FERNAN CABALLERO.

Well, sirs, Doña Fortuna and Don Dinero were so in love that you never saw one without the other. The bucket follows the rope, and Don Dinero followed Doña Fortuna till folks began to talk scandal. Then they made up their minds to get married.

Don Dinero was a big swollen fellow, with a head of Peruvian gold, a belly of Mexican silver, legs of the copper of Segovia, and shoes of paper from the great factory of Madrid.[17]

Doña Fortuna was a mad-cap, without faith or law, very slippery, uncertain, and queer, and blinder than a mole.

The pair were at cross purposes before they had finished the wedding-cake. The woman wanted to take the command, but this did not suit Don Dinero, who was of an overbearing and haughty disposition. Why, sirs! my father (may glory be his rest!) used to say that if the sea were to get married he would lose his fierceness. But Don Dinero was more proud than the sea and did not lose his presumption.

As both wished to be first and best, and neither would consent to be last or least, they determined to decide by a trial which of the two had the more power.

"Look," said the wife to the husband, "do you see, down there in the hollow of that olive-tree, that poor man so discouraged and chop-fallen? Let's try whether you or I can do more for him."

The husband agreed, and they went right away, he croaking, and she with a jump, and took up their quarters by the tree.

The man, who was a wretch that had never in his whole life seen either of them, opened eyes like a pair of great olives when the two appeared suddenly in front of him.

"God be with you!" said Don Dinero.

"And with his grace's worship also," replied the poor man.

"Don't you know me?"

"I only know his highness to serve him."

"You have never seen my face?"

"Never since God made me."

"How is that—have you nothing?"

"Yes, sir; I have six children as naked as colts, with throats like old stocking-legs; but, as to property, I have only grab and swallow, and often not that."

"Why don't you work?"

"Why? Because I can't find work, and I'm so unlucky that everything I undertake turns out as crooked as a goat's horn. Since I married, it appears as though a frost had fallen on me. I'm the fag of ill-hap. Now, here—a master set us to dig him a well for a price, promising doubloons when it should be finished, but giving not a single maravedi[18] beforehand."

"The master was wise," remarked Don Dinero. "'Money taken, arms broken,' is a good saying. Go on, my man."

"I put my soul in the work; for, notwithstanding your worship sees me looking so forlorn, I am a man, sir."

"Yes," said Don Dinero, "I had perceived that."

"But there are four kinds of men, señor. There are men that are men; there are good-for-naughts; and contemptible monkeys; and men that are below monkeys, and not worth the water they drink. But, as I was telling you, the deeper we dug, the lower down we went, but the fewer signs we found of water. It appeared as if the centre of the world had been dried. Lastly, and finally, we found nothing, señor, but a cobbler."

"In the bowels of the earth!" exclaimed Don Dinero, indignant at hearing that his ancestral palace was so meanly inhabited.

"No, señor!" said the man deprecatingly; "not in the bowels; further on, in the country of the other tribe."

"What tribe, man?"

"The antipodes, señor."

"My friend, I am going to do you a favor," said Don Dinero pompously; and he put a dollar in the man's hand.

The man hardly credited his eyes; joy lent wings to his feet, he was not long in arriving at a baker's shop and buying bread, but, when he went to take out his money, he found nothing in his pocket but the hole through which his dollar had gone without saying good-by.

The poor fellow was in despair; he looked for it, but when did one of his sort ever find anything? No; St. Anthony guards the pig that is destined for the wolf. After the money he lost time, and after time patience, and, that lost, he fell to casting after his bad luck every curse that ever opened lips.

Doña Fortuna strained herself with laughing. Don Dinero's face turned yellower with bile, but he had no remedy except to put his hand in his pocket and bring out an onza[19] to give the man.

The poor fellow was so full of joy that it leaped out of his eyes. He did not go for bread this time, but hurried to a dry-goods store to buy a few clothes for his wife and children. When he handed the onza to pay for what he had bought, the dealer said, and stuck to it, that the piece was bad; that no doubt its owner was a coiner of false money, and that he was going to give him up to justice. On hearing this, the poor man was confounded, and his face became so hot that you might have toasted beans on it; but he took to his heels and ran to tell Don Dinero what had happened, weeping the while with shame and disappointment.

Doña Fortuna nearly burst herself with laughing, and Don Dinero felt the mustard rising in his nose.[20] "Here," said he to the poor man, "take these two thousand reals; your luck is truly bad; but if I don't mend it, my power is less than I think."

The man set off so delighted that he saw nothing until he flattened his nose against some robbers. They left him as his mother brought him into the world.

When his wife chucked him under the chin and said it was her turn, and it would soon be seen which had the more power, the petticoats or the breeches, Don Dinero looked more shame-faced than a clown.

She then went to the poor man, who had thrown himself on the ground and was tearing his hair, and blew on him. At the instant the lost dollar lay under his hand. "Something is something," he said to himself; "I'll buy bread for my children, for they have gone three days on half a ration, and their stomachs must be as empty as a charity-box."

As he passed before the shop where he had bought the clothes, the dealer called him in, and begged of him to overlook his previous rudeness; said that he had really believed the onza to be a bad one, but that the assayer, who happened to stop as he passed that way, had assured him that it was one of the very best, rather over than under weight, in fact. He asked leave to return the piece, and the clothes besides, which he begged him to accept as an expression of sorrow for the annoyance he had caused him.

The poor man declared himself satisfied, loaded his arms with the things; and, if you will believe me, as he was crossing the plaza, some soldiers of the civil guard were bringing in the highwaymen that had robbed him. Immediately, the judge, who was one of the judges God sends, made them restore the two thousand reals without costs or waste. The poor man, in partnership with a neighbor of his, put his money in a mine. Before they had dug down six feet they struck a vein of gold, another of lead, and another of iron. Right away people began to call him Don, then "You Sir," then Your Excellency. Since that time Doña Fortuna has had her husband humbled and shut up in her shoe, and she, more addle-pated and indiscriminating than ever, goes on distributing her favors without rhyme or reason, without judgment or discretion—madly, foolishly, generously, hit or miss, like the blows of the blind stick; and one of them will reach the writer, if the reader is pleased with the tale.