Your offers sound too liberal, and I fear
that I must earn your bounty by the doing of work that honest men might
shrink from.'
'A fair argument, but, as it happens, not quite a correct one. Listen:
you have been told that yonder physician, to whose house you went but
now, and these'--here he repeated four or five names--'are the greatest
of their tribe in Seville. It is not so. I am the greatest and the
richest, and I do more business than any two of them. Do you know
what my earnings have been this day alone? I will tell you; just over
twenty-five gold pesos,* more than all the rest of the profession have
taken together, I will wager. You want to know how I earn so much; you
want to know also, why, if I have earned so much, I am not content to
rest from my labours. Good, I will tell you. I earn it by ministering to
the vanities of women and sheltering them from the results of their own
folly. Has a lady a sore heart, she comes to me for comfort and advice.
Has she pimples on her face, she flies to me to cure them. Has she a
secret love affair, it is I who hide her indiscretion; I consult the
future for her, I help her to atone the past, I doctor her for imaginary
ailments, and often enough I cure her of real ones. Half the secrets of
Seville are in my hands; did I choose to speak I could set a score of
noble houses to broil and bloodshed.
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