The  Licenciado  Periquin  is  apprenticed  to
a    barber,    robs    the    customers,   and    makes

1  This  was  the  8th  story  of  Petrus  Alphonsus,  the  6th  of
the  Heptameron,  the  16th  of  the  Cent  nouvelles  nouvelles,
the  23d  of  the  1st  Part  of  Bandello,  the  2d  of  Sabadino  degli
Arienti,  and  is  to  be  found  in  the  Gesta  Bomanorum  and
elsewhere.
SOCIETY  THROUGH  THE   ROGUE'S  BYE      155

■way  with  his  master's  lancets  and  razors.
Alonso  describes  a  poor  student  who  allowed
himself  to  be  shaved  gratuitously  by  a  begin-
ner, and  hearing  a  dog  baying,  judged  that
it,  too,  must  be  losing  its  skin.  Estevanillo
is  a  hopeless  blunderer  with  the  razor.  While
his  master  is  called  away  one  day  by  a  street
quarrel  from  an  hidalgo  whose  mustache  he  was
dressing,  Estevanillo  tries  his  hand,  and  saves
his  life  only  by  flight.  Sometime  afterward  he
is  placed  with  another  barber,  his  father  agree-
ing upon  a  forfeit  if  his  year  be  not  served  out.
His  first  experiment  is  upon  a  beggar,  and
his  new  master,  returning  from  a  bleeding,
finds  the  shop  filled  with  an  angry  crowd,
and  the  beggar's  wife  disclaiming  him,  so
hacked  is  he.  Put  on  probation,  before  an-
other month  has  passed  the  picaro  has  nearly
severed  the  ear  of  a  merchant's  son,  and  before
the  year  is  done  his  father  has  to  pay  the  forfeit
and  large  damages  as  well,  since  Estevanillo,
with  the  best  of  his  master's  tools,  decamps
to  Naples.
