In this chap­ter, we delve into the con­tin­u­ing mis­ad­ven­tures of Lazaril­lo, start­ing from a cun­ning ploy to trick his blind mas­ter, lead­ing to mis­for­tune for the blind man and Lazaril­lo’s swift depar­ture to Tor­ri­jos. Fur­ther escapades lead Lazaril­lo to Maque­da, where he meets a miser­ly priest and becomes his ser­vant. The stark con­trast in their char­ac­ters is swift­ly unveiled through Lazaril­lo’s strug­gles with hunger due to the priest’s stingi­ness. Des­per­ate to sup­ple­ment his mea­ger food rations, Lazaril­lo devis­es clever schemes to access a locked chest con­tain­ing bread, employ­ing tac­tics from feign­ing rodent dam­age to per­son­al­ly cre­at­ing access. His resource­ful­ness demon­strates a sur­vival instinct, con­tin­u­al­ly adjust­ing his plans to react to the priest’s increas­ing­ly strin­gent mea­sures to pro­tect the chest’s con­tents.

Lazaril­lo’s life under the priest’s roof is marked by extreme hunger, only momen­tar­i­ly alle­vi­at­ed by his inven­tive thefts from the chest and the scant meals pro­vid­ed at funer­als they attend. His con­stant hunger leads him to pray for the death of oth­ers, high­light­ing the dire straits of his exis­tence. Despite con­sid­er­ing escape, Lazaril­lo is deterred by his weak­ened state and the fear of encoun­ter­ing a worse fate with anoth­er mas­ter. His strate­gies evolve from blam­ing non-exis­tent mice to phys­i­cal­ly alter­ing the chest, which sparks an esca­la­tion of coun­ter­mea­sures from the priest, cul­mi­nat­ing in a mouse­trap and, even­tu­al­ly, total seal off of the chest.

The nar­ra­tive expert­ly por­trays Lazaril­lo’s des­per­a­tion and cun­ning intel­li­gence as he nav­i­gates his fraught rela­tion­ship with the priest. His fear and resource­ful­ness blaze a trail of dark humor through the grim real­i­ty of his strug­gles for sur­vival. This pre­car­i­ous sit­u­a­tion reach­es a cli­max when the priest, mis­tak­ing a whistling sound caused by Lazaril­lo’s makeshift key stor­age for a snake, deliv­ers a vio­lent blow to Lazaril­lo, mis­tak­ing him for the snake he feared was invad­ing their home. This chap­ter not only advances Lazaril­lo’s tale of sur­vival but also weaves themes of des­per­a­tion, decep­tion, and the lengths to which one will go to over­come adver­si­ty.