Page:Madrid shaver's adventures in the Spanish inquisition (2).pdf/3

3 the shoulder of the beast, and at the same time, adroitly tucking his blue cap under his right arm, and flinging his skirt over his left shoulder en cavalier, began to lay about him with a stout ashen sapling, upon the ears, pole, and cheeks, of the recreant mule. The fire now flashed from a pair of Andalusian eyes, as black as charcoal, and not less inflammable, and taking the segara from his mouth, with which he had vainly hoped to have regaled his nostrils in a sharp winter’s evening by the way, raised such a thundering troop of angels, saints, and martyrs, from Saint Michael, downwards, not forgetting his own namesake St. Nicolas de Tolentino, by the way, that if curses could have made the mule to go, the dispute would have been soon ended ; but not a saint could make her stir any other ways than upwards and downwards at a stand. A small troop of mendicant friars were at this moment conducting the host to a dying man. —‘Nicolas Pedrosa,’ said an old friar, ‘be patient with your beast, and spare your blasphemies ; remember Balaam.’ —‘Ah! father,’ replied Pedrosa, ‘Balaam cudgelled his beast till she spoke, so will I mine till she roars.’ —‘Fie, fie, prophane fellow,’ cries another of the fraternity. ‘Go about your work, friend,’ quoth Nicolas, ‘and let me go about mine ; I warrant it is the more pressing of the two ; your patient is going out of the world, and mine is coming into it.’ ‘Hear him,’ cries a third, ‘hear the vile wretch how he blasphemes the body of God.’ And then the troop passed slowly on to the tinkling of the bell. A man must know nothing of a mule’s ears,