The Manuscript Found in Saragossa by Jan Potocki Page A

any, and as such a pin cost forty-five gold ounces, he became as gloomy as my mother had been a few days before.
    While this was going on, my father was visited by a local stalwart called Grillo Monaldi, who came to him to have his pistols cleaned.Seeing my father so depressed, Monaldi asked him why and my father told him. Monaldi, having thought for a moment, spoke to him as follows:
    â€˜Signor Zoto, I am indebted to you more than you know. A few days ago my dagger was by chance found in the body of a man who had been murdered on the road to Naples. The police took this dagger to all the armourers, and you nobly testified that it was unknown to you. And yet it was a weapon which you had made and sold to me. If you had told the truth, it could have caused me some embarrassment. So here are the forty-five gold ounces you need, and if you need more my purse will always be open to you.’
    My father accepted gratefully and went to buy a gold pin studded with a ruby. He took it to my mother, who duly showed it off that very day to her haughty sister.
    When she came home, my mother had no doubt that she would soon see Signora Lunardo wearing some new jewel. But her sister had other plans. She resolved to go to church followed by a hired lackey in livery, and she suggested this to her husband. Lunardo, who was very miserly, had not jibbed at buying an object in gold, which seemed to him to be as safe an investment on the head of his wife as in his coffers. But it was quite another matter to be asked to give some wretch an ounce of gold to do no more than stand behind his wife’s pew for an hour. But Signora Lunardo nagged him about it so often and so violently that he finally decided to walk behind her himself, wearing livery. Signora Lunardo thought her husband would do as well as anyone else in such a role, and she decided the very next Sunday to make an appearance in the parish with this new style of lackey in her train. Her neighbours sniggered a little at such a masquerade but my aunt attributed their teasing to the envy that was consuming them.
    As she approached the church, the beggars hooted and jeered and shouted out in their dialect, ‘Mira Lunardu che fa lu criadu de sua mugiera!’ 2
    But beggars do not push their boldness beyond a certain limit, andSignora Lunardo entered into the church unmolested, where she was accorded all sorts of honours. She was offered holy water and led to a pew, whereas my mother was left to stand lost in a crowd of women of the lowest class.
    When she got back home my mother took out my father’s blue coat and began to decorate the sleeves with pieces of a yellow bandolier which had once belonged to a bandit’s cartridge belt. My father was taken aback by this and asked what she was doing. My mother told him what her sister had done and how her husband had obliged her by following her in the livery of a lackey.
    My father informed her that he would never oblige her in this way. But the following Sunday he paid one ounce of gold to a hired lackey to walk behind my mother to church, where she cut an even finer figure than had Signora Lunardo the previous Sunday.
    Immediately after Mass on the same day, Monaldi came up to my father and spoke as follows:
    â€˜My dear Zoto, I have been told about the extreme lengths to which the rivalry between your wife and her sister has been taken. If you don’t do anything about it you will be unhappy as long as you live. There are only two courses of action open to you: either to beat your wife or to adopt a manner of life which will allow you to satisfy her expensive tastes. If you decide to adopt the first course I will give you a hazelwood stick which I used on my late wife when she was alive. There are other hazelwood sticks which, when you grasp them by both ends, turn in your hand to indicate where water or even treasure is to be found underground. This stick does not possess these properties. But if you take it by one end