Lavengro - George Borrow (nice books to read TXT) 📗

in the dungeon, sometimes screeching, sometimes holloing, for I soon became frighted, having nothing in the cell to divert me. At last the cook found his way to me by stealth, and comforted me a little, bringing me tidbits out of the kitchen; and he visited me again and again⁠—not often, however, for he dare only come when he could steal away the key from the custody of the thaif of a porter. I was three years in the dungeon, and should have gone mad but for the cook, and his words of comfort, and his tidbits, and nice books which he brought me out of the library, which were the Calendars of Newgate and the Lives of Irish Rogues and Raparees,339 the only English books in the library. However, at the end of three years, the ould thaif of a rector, wishing to look at them books, missed them from the library, and made a perquisition about them, and the thaif of a porter said that he shouldn’t wonder if I had them, saying that he had once seen me reading; and then the rector came with others to my cell, and took my books from me, from under my straw, and asked me how I came by them; and on my refusal to tell, they disciplined me again till the blood ran down my back; and making more perquisition they at last accused the cook of having carried the books to me, and the cook not denying, he was given warning to leave next day, but he left that night, and took me away with him, for he stole the key, and came to me and cut my chain through, and then he and I escaped from the religious house through a window⁠—the cook with a bundle, containing what things he had. No sooner had we got out than the honest cook gave me a little bit of money and a loaf, and told me to follow a way which he pointed out, which he said would lead to the sea; and then, having embraced me after the Italian way, he left me, and I never saw him again. So I followed the way which the cook pointed out, and in two days reached a seaport called Chiviter Vik,340 terribly foot foundered, and there I met a sailor who spoke Irish, and who belonged to a vessel just ready to sail for France; and the sailor took me on board his vessel, and said I was his brother, and the captain gave me a passage to a place in France called Marseilles; and when I got there, the captain and sailor got a little money for me and a passport, and I travelled across the country towards a place they directed me to called Bayonne, from which they said I might, perhaps, get to Ireland. Coming, however, to a place called Pau, all my money being gone, I enlisted into a regiment called the Army of the Faith,341 which was going into Spain, for the King of Spain had been dethroned and imprisoned by his own subjects, as perhaps you may have heard; and the King of France, who was his cousin, was sending an army to help him, under the command of his own son, whom the English called Prince Hilt,342 because when he was told that he was appointed to the command, he clapped his hand on the hilt of his sword. So I enlisted into the regiment of the Faith, which was made up of Spaniards, many of them priests who had run out of Spain, and broken Germans, and foot-foundered Irish like myself. It was said to be a blackguard regiment, that same regiment of the Faith; but, ’faith, I saw nothing blackguardly going on in it, for you would hardly reckon card-playing, and dominoes, and pitch and toss blackguardly, and I saw nothing else going on in it. There was one thing in it which I disliked⁠—the priests drawing their Spanish knives occasionally, when they lost their money. After we had been some time at Pau, the Army of the Faith was sent across the mountains into Spain, as the vanguard of the French; and no sooner did the Spaniards see the Faith than they made a dash at it, and the Faith ran away, myself along with it, and got behind the French army, which told it to keep there, and the Faith did so, and followed the French army, which soon scattered the Spaniards, and in the end placed the king on his throne again. When the war was over the Faith was disbanded; some of the foreigners, however, amongst whom I was one, were put into a Guard regiment, and there I continued for more than a year.

“One day, being at a place called the Escurial, I took stock, as the tradesmen say, and found I possessed the sum of eighty dollars won by playing at cards, for though I could not play so well with the foreign cards as with the pack ye gave me, Shorsha, I had yet contrived to win money from the priests and soldiers of the Faith. Finding myself possessed of such a capital I determined to leave the service, and to make the best of my way to Ireland; so I deserted, but coming in an evil hour to a place they calls Torre Lodones, I found the priest playing at cards with his parishioners. The sight of the cards made me stop, and then, fool like, notwithstanding the treasure I had about me, I must wish to play, so not being able to speak their language, I made signs to them to let me play, and the priest and his thaives consented willingly; so I sat down to cards with the priest and two of his parishioners, and in a little time had won plenty of their money, but