Page:Madrid shaver's singular adventures, and wonderful escape from the Spanish Inquisition (3).pdf/7

7 overlooked, and which his patient Donna Leonora de Casafonda had given him in charge to deliver as directed. ‘Well, well,’ cried he, ‘let it pass; there can be no mystery in this harmless scrawl; a letter of advice to some friend or relation; I’ll not break the seal; let the fathers read it, if they like, ’twill prove the truth of my deposition, and help out my excuse for the hurry of my errand, and the unfortunate adventure of a damned refractory mule.’—And now no sooner had the recollections of the wayward mule crossed the brain of poor Nicolas Pedrosa, than he began to blast her at a furious rate. ‘The scratches and the scab to boot confound thy scurvy hide,’ quoth he ‘thou ass-begotten bastard, whom Noah never let into his ark! The vengeance take thee, for an uncreated barren beast of promiscuous generation! What devil’s crotchet got into thy capricous noddle, that thou shouldst fall in love with that Nazaritish bell, and run bellowing like Lucifer into the midst of those barefooted vermine, who were more malicious and more greedy than the locusts of Egypt? Oh! that I had the art of Simon Magus to conjure thee into this dungeon in my stead; but I warrant thou art chewing thy barley straw without any pity for thy wretched master, whom thy jade’s tricks have delivered bodily to the tormentors, to be sport for these uncircumcised sons of Dagon’ And now the cell door opened, when a savage figure entered, carrying a huge parcel of clanking fetters, with a collar of iron, which he put round the neck of poor Pedrosa, telling him, with a truly diabolical grin, whilst he was