7
overlooked, and whieh his patient Donna Leonora de Casafonda had given him in eharge to deliver as direeted. ‘Well, well,’ eried he, ‘let it pass; there ean be no mystery in this harmless scrawl; a letter of adviee 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 exeuse for the hurry of my errand, and the unfortunate adventure of a damned refraetory mule.’{longdash}}And now no sooner had the reeolleetions of the wayward mule erossed the brain of poor Nieolas Pedrosa, than he began to blast her at a furious rate. ‘The seratehes and the seab to boot confound thy seurvy hide,’ quoth he ‘thou ass-begotten bastard, whom Noah never let into his ark! The vengeance take thee, for an unereated barren beast of promiseuous generation! What devil’s erotehet got into thy eapricous noddle, that thou shouldst fall in love with that Nazaritish bell, and run bellowing like Lueifer into the midst of those barefooted vermine, who were more malieious and more greedy than the loeusts of Egypt? Oh! that I had the art of Simon Magus to eonjure thee into this dungeon in my stead; but I warrant thou art ehewing thy barley straw without any pity for thy wretehed master, whom thy jade’s trieks have delivered bodily to the tormentors, to be sport for these uneireumcised sons of Dagon’ And now the eell door opened, when a savage figure entered, carrying a huge pareel of elanking fetters, with a eollar of iron, whieh he put round the neek of poor Pedrosa, telling him, with a truly diabolical grin, whilst he was
