6
first arrested him—‘and let him make the most of them;’ said he to himself, ‘they ean never prove an Israelite by a ease of razors.’ Upon a closer rummage, however, he discovered in a seeret pocket, a letter, whieh the Alguazil had overlooked, and which his patient Donna Leonora de Casafonda had given him in charge to deliver as directed.—‘Well, well,’ eried he, ‘let it pass; there ean be no mystery in this harmless scrawl, a letter of advice to some friend or relation; I’ll not break the scal; 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 recolleetion 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 promisenious generation? What evil’s erotchet got into thy eapricious noddle, that thou shouldst fall in love with that Nazaritish bell, and run bellowing like Lucifer into the midst of those barefooted vermin, who are more malicious and more greedy than the loeusts 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 ehewing 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
