Page:Madrid shaver's adventures in the Spanish Inquisition (4).pdf/12

12 unless some medicines more efficacious than common are administered; art thou acquainted with any such, friend Nicolas?-So please your Excellency, quoth Nicolas, my processes have been tolerably successful; I have bandages and cataplasms, with oils and conserves, that I have no cause to complain of; they will restore nature to its proper state in all decent time.-Thou talkest like a fool, friend Nicolas, interrupting him, said the Inquisitor? What tellest thou me of thy swathings and swaddlings? quick work must be wrought by quick medicine: hast thou none such in thy botica? I’ll answer for it thou hast not; therefore, look you, sirrah, here is a little vial compounded by a famous chemist; see that you mix it in the next apocem you administer to Donna Leonora; it is the most capital sedative in nature; give her the whole of it, and let her husband return when he will, depend upon it he will make no discoveries from her.-Humph! quoth Nicolas within himself, well said Inquisidor! He took the vial with all possible respect, and was not wanting in professions of the most inviolable fidelity and secrecy.-No more words, friend Nicolas, quoth the Inquisidor, upon that score, I do not believe thee one jot the more for all thy promises, my dependence is upon thy fears and not thy faith; I fancy thou hast seen enough of this place not to be willing to return to it once for all! Having so said, he rang a bell, and ordered Nicolas to be forthwith liberated, bidding the messenger return his clothes instantly to him with all that belonged to him, and having slipt a purse into his hand well filled