Page:Travels and adventures of Wm. Lithgow (3).pdf/9

9 was a young French gentleman, a protestant born in Languedoc, who had been condemned by the senatc to the gallies for life, for being accessary to the death of a young noble Venetian, in a quarrel concerning a courtezan. Having leave from his captain to come on shore with a keeper wearing an iron bolt on his leg, our author commenced an acquaintance with him, and greatly compassionating his misfortune, (being at Venice when the accident happened,) contrived his escape at the hazard of his own life, by means of an old Greek woman, his laundress, who lent him an old gown and a black veil for a disguse, Accordingly, Lithgow invited the kecper to a tavern, where, with deep draughts of Leatic, he intoxicated this Argus, and left him asleep. Then disburdening his friend of his irons, he clothed him in a female habit, and sent him out of the town, conducted by the Greek woman, and when past the guard and gate, our traveller followed him with his clothes, and, interchanging them, directed him over the mountains to a Greek convent, where he might be entertained till the Maltese gallies or men-of-war should touch there, on their way to the Levant. In his way back our author was met by two soldiers of his nation, Smith and Hurgrave, who were coming to inform him that the officers of