Sudden Death

Miserliness

On March 14, 1618, Quevedo wrote a letter to Pedro Téllez Girón in which he described in minute and cruel detail the greed with which the duke of Uceda, the king’s favorite, had received a bribe. Quevedo says that the people at the Palace of Uceda were so miserly and so quick to snatch up any small dispensation that they didn’t even return his packing materials: “Even the cotton was not scorned, being used for candlewicks.” A use was also found for the boxes in which the gifts came: “The wooden boxes in which everything was packed thought to escape notice, being flawed, but when it was discovered that they were made of poplar, with great celebration they were shared out to be used for tennis rackets.”