I repeat, that to conceal the name
and abode of your parents, and even to change your own proper
appellation, are prudent measures. Between ourselves there must,
nevertheless, be no concealment: for the present I will ask your names
only, but these you must give me."

Rincon then told his name, and so did Cortado: whereupon Monipodio said,
"Henceforward I request and desire that you, Rincon, call yourself
Rinconete, and you, Cortado, Cortadillo; these being names which accord,
as though made in a mould, with your age and circumstances, as well as
with our ordinances, which make it needful that we should also know the
names of the parents of our comrades, because it is our custom to have a
certain number of masses said every year for the souls of our dead, and
of the benefactors of our society; and we provide for the payment of the
priests who say them, by setting apart a share of our swag for that
purpose.

"These masses, thus said and paid for, are of great service to the souls
aforesaid. Among our benefactors we count the Alguazil, who gives us
warning; the Advocate, who defends us; the Executioner, who takes pity
upon us when we have to be whipped, and the man who, when we are running
along the street, and the people in full cry after us bawling 'Stop
thief,' throws himself between us and our pursuers, and checks the
torrent, saying, 'Let the poor wretch alone, his lot is hard enough; let
him go, and his crime will be his punishment.' We also count among our
benefactors the good wenches who aid us by their labours while we are in
prison, or at the galleys; our fathers, and the mothers who brought us
into the world; and, finally, we take care to include the Clerk of the
Court, for if he befriend us, there is no crime which he will not find
means to reduce to a slight fault, and no fault which he does not
prevent from being punished. For all these our brotherhood causes the
_sanctimonies_ (ceremonies) I have named to be _solecised_ (solemnised)
every year, with all possible _grandiloquence_.

"Certainly," replied Rinconete (now confirmed in that name), "certainly
that is a good work, and entirely worthy of the lofty and profound
genius with which we have heard that you, Senor Monipodio, are endowed.
Our parents still enjoy life; but should they precede us to the tomb,
we will instantly give notice of that circumstance to this happy and
highly esteemed fraternity, to the end that you may have 'sanctimonies
solecised