Page:Madrid shaver's singular adventures, and wonderful escape from the Spanish Inquisition (1).pdf/6

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through passages and vaults, and melancholy cells, till he was delivered into the dungeon, where he was finally left to his solitary meditations. Hapless being; what a scene of horror! Nicolas felt all the terrors of his condition, but being an Andalusian, and, like his countrymen, of a lively imagination, he began to turn over all the resources of his invention for happy fetch, if any such might occur, for helping him out of the dismal limbo he was in: he had not long to seek for the cause of his misfortune; his adventure with the barefooted friars was a ready solution of all difficulties of that nature, had there been any; there was, however, another thing, which might have troubled a stouter heart than Nicolas's———he was a Jew. this, of a certain, would have been a staggering item in a poor devil’s confession, but then it was a secret to all the world but Nicolas, and Nicolas’s conscience did not then urge him to reveal it. He now began to overhaul the inventory of his personals about him, and with some satisfaction counted three little medals of the blessed Virgin, two Agnus Deis, a Saint Nicolas de Tolentino, and a formidable string of beads, all pendant from his neck, and within his shirt; in his pockets he had a paper of dried figs, a small bundle of cigars, a case of lancets, squirt and forceps, and two old razors in a leathern, envelope: these he had delivered one by one to the algunzil, who first arrested him,———'and let them make the most of them,' said he to himself, 'they can never prove an Israelite by a case of razors.' Upon a closer rummage, however, he discovered in a secret pocket, a letter, which the Alguazil had