Vidriera quotes inaccurately the Vulgate's Luke 23.28; perhaps he and his author have in mind also the following derived, popular, and relevant saying that appears still in the Royal Academy Dictionary, s. v. «judío»: «'cegar como la judía de Zaragoza, llorando duelos ajenos'. Expr. con que se moteja a los que sin obligación ni motivo justificado, se interesan demasiado por los asuntos ajenos». (N. from the A.)

The New Christian is slurred as a Judaizer and sullied with the name of the Jewish Sabbath. The peasant Domingo (whose name is a common one among shepherds, according to the well-travelled dog Berganza [309]), would be supposed to be an Old Christian, forced to wait, while one Sabbath passes, for the arrival of his own. His name also links this braggart to St. Dominick and the Dominican Order, zealous preachers and enforcers of orthodoxy through the Inquisition, which the Dominicans administer. (N. from the A.)

Whether there are ninety-seven or more or less depends on one's counting method. My first ten are seven for Casalduero (138); Riley counts fifty-nine in all (190) and Armand Singer, seventy-five («Form and Substance» 22). In a companion essay, to be titled «Vidriera's Blather», I list the exchanges and study their characteristics and functions and related critical problems. (N. from the A.)

See Forcione's learned study for a reading that affirms «Vidriera's» Erasmianism and Cynicism, and the character's «keen insight», and accepts the «aptness of nearly all his satirical pronouncements» (241), while noting the «incongruity of such ruthless stereotyping» (264) and its insensitivity to «human particularity» (267). (N. from the A.)

«Potencia del alma, en virtud de la cual concibe las cosas, las compara, las juzga, e induce y deduce otras de las que ya conoce» (DRAE, s. v. «entendimiento»). (N. from the A.)

«Tenía tan felice memoria que era cosa de espanto; e ilustrábala tanto con su buen entendimiento, que no era menos famoso por él que por ella» (44). Entendimiento and memoria are the first and second of the three faculties of the soul and the third is voluntad. Tomás, according to the narrator's testimony, is comparably exemplary in all three. His will is a virtual Gibraltar: treachery, superstition, and poison combined did not «conquistar la roca de la voluntad de Tomás» (52). (N. from the A.)

Robert Russell sees and puts it clearly: along with his «primera libertad y seguridad en el movimiento», Tomás loses for this while «la capacidad de asimilar nuevas experiencias»; «ya no puede asimilar, ya no puede crecer, ya no puede sentir. Sólo puede servir...de simple espejo» (246). (N. from the A.)

The acute observation continues: «Es éste [i. e., su saber acumulado], precisamente, el instrumento que utiliza en la segunda etapa de su vivir» during which «se halla carente de autoconocimiento» (Deslindes 63). (N. from the A.)

Several readings affirm against the text that Vidriera enjoys freedom and specifically freedom of speech during this mortifying interval of madness and persecution. Frank Casa maintains that Vidriera «acquires with his madness the liberty and the ability to say what he pleases» (245). Avalle-Arce accepts Casa's claim that Vidriera was «absolutely free to say what he wished» and adds that, on returning to the world of action, Rueda «abandona la cómoda postura de la vida como espectáculo» (20). It appears to me that the more cómoda postura here is the crowd's and readers'. See also Forcione 241. (N. from the A.)

«Pide que le hablen desde lejos, como arrojándole las palabras, y su diálogo no tiene intimidad alguna, pues Vidriera no habla nunca de sí» (Rosales 207; his emphasis). (N. from the A.)