Snake

The snake is an imagined creature whose supposed presence transforms Lázaro’s secret raids on the priest’s bread chest into a nocturnal campaign of fear. A neighbor’s story gives the priest a shape for his suspicions; the key Lázaro hides in his mouth supplies the convincing whistle; and the priest’s attempt to kill the intruder leaves Lázaro unconscious and badly injured. The episode’s comedy depends on a cruel reversal: the snake is fictitious, but the blow is not.

The Snake Enters the House

The priest’s bread and cheese have been disappearing, while the trap intended to catch a mouse seems unable to account for the damage. A neighbor proposes that a snake must be taking the bait: long enough to reach it without being caught by the trap’s spring. The explanation is only a guess, but it changes the meaning of every small sound in the house. The priest accepts the possibility and becomes unable to sleep peacefully.

The imagined animal acquires a particular menace because the priest fears it may seek warmth in Lázaro’s straw bed, curl up in the bedding or under his shirt, and bite him. Night sounds that might otherwise pass unnoticed become signs of a hidden creature. The snake remains unseen throughout; its presence is made persuasive through rumor, darkness, and the priest’s increasingly vigilant response.

A Nightly Hunt

Armed with a cudgel kept by his bed, the priest rises whenever he hears a noise, strikes about in the dark, and searches the chest and Lázaro’s bedding. His investigations disturb the neighbors as well as Lázaro. By day, Lázaro continues to attack the chest while the priest is at church or elsewhere in the city; by night, the priest’s alarm keeps the supposed snake away from it. The animal’s imagined habits therefore shape the household’s routine, even though the real danger to the stored food comes from Lázaro.

Lázaro worries that the search will uncover the key to the chest, so he keeps it in his mouth as he sleeps. It is a practical concealment, consistent with the vigilance he has learned under masters who search his clothes and seams. But the device turns against him: the key shifts in his open mouth, and his breath passes through its hollow shaft, producing a whistle. The sound gives the priest precisely what he expects to hear—the snake’s hiss.

The False Creature and the Real Blow

The priest follows the whistle in silence, cudgel in hand, believing the snake has entered Lázaro’s bed to seek warmth. Certain that it lies beneath him, he raises the stick and strikes with all his strength. The blow splits Lázaro’s head and leaves him unconscious. The priest’s mistaken identification does not soften the consequence: the imagined animal is harmless because it does not exist, while the fear built around it has already become bodily violence.

When the priest realizes that he has struck Lázaro, he calls to him, finds blood, and fetches a light. The key is still in Lázaro’s mouth, half inside and half outside, as it had been when the whistle sounded. The priest pulls it free, recognizes that its teeth match the lock of the chest, and tests it in the lock. The snake story thus ends not with the discovery of an animal but with the discovery of the means by which Lázaro has been getting into the chest.

Narrative and Material Irony

The sequence makes a small object carry the episode’s reversal. Hidden as a safeguard, the key becomes audible through its hollow channel and visible as evidence of theft. The priest’s own explanation of the missing food has likewise displaced the truth: first he and the neighbors imagine an elusive creature; only after the blow does the key disclose a human culprit. The chain of inference is comic in its mistaken premise, but its outcome is harsh and exact.

The snake also concentrates the imbalance between master and servant. Lázaro’s hunger has driven him to steal food, and his ingenuity lets him evade the priest’s lock and scrutiny for a time. Yet the priest controls the house, the chest, and the cudgel; when suspicion turns into action, Lázaro bears the injury. The episode’s fear is generated by something unseen, but its central conflict is material: food is guarded, access is concealed, and a servant’s means of survival becomes the evidence used against him.