He  has  love  complications  with  two  ladies,  who
pursue  him  as  he  is  endeavoring  to  elude  them
in  a  ship;  one  is  drowned,  he  marries  the  other,
and  lives  to  be  rich  and  happy,  "  dying  full  of
days  and  not  empty  of  merit."  Of  every  picaro,
as  of  this  one,  it  might  be  said, "  Periquin  laughed
with  the  happy,  wept  with  the  sad,  gamed  with
the  rogue  .  .  .  was  in  short  a  chameleon,
which  takes  the  color  of  the  cloth  on  which  it  is
placed."'  More  vigorous,  if  less  exactly  pica-
resque, smoother  in  style  and  generally  better,
was  the  Novela  de  la  comadre,  the  tale  of  a  cheat
put  upon  Beatriz,  a  midwife,  and  her  pretty
daughter,  Felipa,  of  Jaen,  by  Molino,  a  lackey
of  Felipa's  betrothed.  The  lover  himself  is
absent  in  the  Indies,  but  has  left  Molino  to
guard  his  interests.  The  picaro,  however,  as-
sociates with  him  another  scoundrel,  and  the
two  playing  a  double   role,  first   as  religious


CRUDE  FORMS  OF  THE  PICARESQUE  NOVEL    257

ascetics,  and  then  as  wealthy  Mexicans,  manage
very  adroitly  to  ruin  Beatriz,  Felipa,  and  the
latter's  cousin,  Isabel,  escaping  with  their  goods
and  leaving  their  ambitious  victims  each  an
heir.  The  humor  of  the  story  lay  in  the  mas-
querade of  the  rogue  lackeys  as  father  confes-
sors at  one  moment,  and  as  gallants  at  the  next,
their  holy  disguise  being  used  to  aid  and  abet
their  rogueries.
Differing  from  any  other  of  the  picaresque
novels  of  the  first  stage  and  embracing  both
the  crude  observation  of  rogue  life  and  a
distinct  rogue  fiction  as  well,  the  Desordenada
codieia  de  los  hienes  agenos  of  1619  was  a  curi-
ous accession  to  the  series.  Its  author,  Dr.
