after stamping up and down the room, and crying out that he was an undone advocate, ran quivering out into the street like one frantic, asking every body if he had seen a man with a lamprey. The two rogues were walking all this time in the neighbourhood; and seeing the doctor set off, in his frantic fit, to the goldsmith's, and knowing that he who brought the lamprey had been well disguised, they began to ask one another, in the jollity of their triumph, what need there was for losing a good lamprey, because they had gained a cup. The other therefore went to the doctor's house, and putting on a face of good news, told the wife that the cup was found. "Master doctor," said he, "bade me come and tell you that it was but a joke of your old friend What's-his-name." "Castellani, I warrant me," said the wife, with a face broad with delight. The same," returned he "master doctor says that Signor Castellani, and the other gentlemen he spoke of, are waiting for you at the Signor's house, where they purpose to laugh away the choler they so merrily raised with a good dinner and wine; and to that end they have sent me for the lamprey." "Take it in God's name," said the good woman; "I am heartily glad to see it go out of the house, and shall follow it myself speedily.' So saying, she gave him the fine hot fish, with some sauce, between two dishes; and the knave, who felt already round the corner with glee, slid it under his cloak, and made the best of his way to his companion, who lifted up his hands and eyes at sight of him, and asked twenty questions in a breath, and chuckled, and slapped his thigh, and snapped his fingers for joy, to think what a pair of fools two rogues had to do with. Little did the poor despairing doctor, on his return home, guess what they were saying of him as he passed the wall of the house in which they were feasting. "Heyday!" cried the wife, smiling all abroad, as she saw him entering, "What, art thou come to fetch me then, bone of my bone? Well; if the gallantest day I have seen many a year! It puts me in it puts me in mind" Here the chirping old lady was about to remind the doctor of the days of his youth, holding out her arms and raising her quivering voice, when (we shudder to relate) she received a considerable cuff on the left cheek. "You make me mad," cried the doctor, “with your eternal idiotical nonsense. What do you mean by coming to fetch you, and the gallantest day of your life? May the devil fetch you, and me, and that invisible fiend that stole the cup." "What!" exclaimed the wife, suddenly changing her tone from a vociferous complaint which she had unthinkingly set up, "did you send nobody then for the lamprey?" Here the doctor cast his eyes upon the bereaved table; and unable to bear the shame of this additional loss, however trivial, began tearing his hair and beard, and hopping about the room, giving his wife a new and scandalous epithet at every step, as if he was dancing to a catalogue of her imperfections. The story shook all the shoulders in Bologna for a month after. As we find, by the length to which this article has already reached, that we should otherwise be obliged to compress our recollections of Spanish, French, and English thieves into a compass that would squeeze them into the merest dry notices, we will postpone them at once to our next number; and relate another story from the same Italian novelist that supplied our last.* Our author is Massuccio of Salerno, a novelist who disputes with Bandello the rank next in popularity to Boccaccio. We have not the original by us; and must be obliged to an English work for the ground-work of our story, as we have been to Paynter's Palace of Pleasure for the one just related. But we take the liberty usual with the repeaters of these stories. We retain the incidents, but tell them in our own way, and imagine what might happen in the intervals. Two Neapolitan sharpers, having robbed a Genoese merchant of his purse, make the best of their way to Sienna, where they arrive during the preaching of St. Bernardin. One of them attends a sermon with an air of conspicuous modesty and devotion, and afterwards waits upon the preacher, and addresses him thus: "Reverend father, you see before you a man, poor indeed, but honest. I do not mean to boast. God knows, I have no reason. Who upon earth has reason, unless it be one who will be the last to boast, like yourself, holy father?" Here the saintly orator shook his head. "I do not mean, resumed the stranger, "to speak even of the reverend and illustrious Bernardin, but as a man among men. For my part, I am, as it were, a creeping thing among them; and yet I am honest. If I have any virtue, it is that. I crawl right onward in my path, looking neither to the right nor to the left; and yet I have my temptations. Reverend father, I have found this purse. I will not deny, that being often in want of the common necessaries of life, and having been obliged last night, in particular, to sit down faint at the city gates, for want of my ordinary crust and onion, which I had given to one (God help him!) still worse off than myself, I did cast some looks-I did, I say, just open the purse, and cast a wistful eye at one of those shining pieces, that lay one over the other inside, with something like a wish that I could procure myself a meal with it, unknown to the lawful proprietor. But my conscience, thank heaven, prevailed. I have to make two requests to you, reverend father. First, that you will absolve me for this my offence; and second, that you will be pleased to mention in one of your discourses, that a poor sinner from Milan, on his road to hear them, has found a purse, and would willingly restore it to the right owner. I would fain give double the contents of it to find him out; but then, what can I do? All the wealth I have consists in my honesty. Be pleased, most illustrious father, to mention this in your discourse, as modestly as becomes my nothingness; and to add especially, that the purse was found on the road from Milan, lying, miraculously as it were, *It is by no means our intention in general to carry on a subject from one paper to another. We have our reasons for doing otherwise. But we may take the liberty sometimes, when the subject is of a various nature like the present; and when the reader may, in fact, leave off at several points, if he pleases, without any necessity of going forward. upon a sunny bank, open to the view of all, under an olive tree, not English story, more good than striking, which we heard a short while ago from a friend. He knew a man of rugged manners, but good heart (not that the two things, as a lover of parenthesis will say, are at all bound to go together), who had a wife somewhat given to debating with hackney-coachmen, and disputing acts of settlement respecting half miles, and quarter miles, and abominable additional sixpences. The good housewife was lingering at the door, and exclaiming against one of these monstrous charioteers, whose hoarse low voice was heard at intervals, full of lying protestations and bad weather, when the husband called out from a back-room, "Never mind there, never mind:-let her be cheated; let her be cheated." This is a digression; but it is as well to introduce it, in order to take away a certain bitterness out of the mouth of the other's moral. We intended to introduce the following delightful little lyric, by a friend, in very different company from that of the gentlemen just presented to the reader; but as Mercury, who was the god of thieves, was also the inventor of the lyre, and as Love himself, time out of mind, has been called a thief, it is not, in all respects, inappropriately situated. We may fancy Mercury playing, and Love singing: and the song is indeed worthy of the performers. It is elemental, Platonical; a meeting of divineness with humanity. The winds of heaven mix for ever Nothing in the world is single ald tod bise edIn one another's being mingle;- See the mountains kiss high heaven, Orders received by the Booksellers, by the Newsmen, and by the Publisher, Joseph Appleyard, 19, Catherine-street, Strand.-Price Twopence. Printed by C. H. Reynell, No. 45, Broad-street, Golden-square, London. THE INDICATOR. There he arriving round about doth flie, SPENSER No. XII-WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 29th, 1819. THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK. We now come to a very unromantic set of rogues; the Spanish ones. In a poetical sense at least they are unromantic; though doubtless the mountains of Spain have seen as picturesque vagabonds in their time as any. There are the robbers in Gil Blas, who have at least a very respectable cavern, and loads of polite superfluities. Who can forget the lofty-named Captain Rolando, with his sturdy height and his whiskers, shewing with a lifted torch his treasure to the timid stripling Gil Blas? The most illustrious theft in Spanish story is one recorded of no less a person than the fine old national hero, the Cid. As the sufferers were Jews, it might be thought that his conscience would not have hurt him in those days; but My Cid" was a kind of early soldier in behalf of sentiment; and though he went to work roughly, he meant nobly and kindly. "God knows," said he, on the present occasion, "I do this thing more of necessity than of wilfulness; but by God's help I shall redeem all." The case was this.. The Cid, who was too good a subject to please his master the king, had quarrelled with him, or rather had been banished; and nobody was to give him house-room or food. A number of friends however followed him; and by the help of his nephew Martin Antolinez, he proposed to raise some money. Martin accordingly negociated the business with a couple of rich Jews, who for a deposit of two chests full of spoil, which they were not to open for a year, on account of political circumstances, agreed to advance six hundred marks. "Well then, said Martin Antolinez, ye see that the night is advancing; the Cid is in haste, give us the marks. This is not the way of business, said they; we must take first, and then give."-Martin accordingly goes with them to the Cid, who in the mean time has filled a couple of heavy chests with sand. The Cid smiled as they kissed his hand, and said, "Ye see I am going out of the land because of the king's displeasure; but I shall leave something with ye." The Jews made a suitable answer, and were then desired to take the chests; but though strong men, they could not raise them from the ground. This put them in such spirits, that 2nd Edition. |