 practices. Shentlemens, (added he, turning to our
adventurers) I take you to witness that I protest and assert and avow that this
person is as pig a necromancer as you would desire to behold; and I supplicate
and beseech and intreat of you, that he may be prought pefore his petters, and
compelled to give an account of his compact and commerce with the imps of
darkness, look you; for as I am a christian soul, and hope for joyful
resurrection, I have this plessed evening seen him perform such things as could
not be done without the aid and instruction and connivance of the Tevil.«
    Gauntlet seemed to enter into the sentiments of this Welch reformer, and
actually laid hold on the delinquent's shoulder, crying, »Damn the rascal! I'll
lay any wager that he's a jesuit; for none of his order travel without a
familiar.« But Peregrine, who looked upon the affair in another point of view,
interposed in behalf of the stranger, whom he freed from his aggressors,
observing that there was no occasion to use violence, and asked in French what
he had done to incur the censure of the informer. The poor foreigner, more dead
than alive, answered that he was an Italian charlatan, who had practised with
some reputation in Padua, until he had the misfortune to attract the notice of
the Inquisition, by exhibiting certain wonderful performances by his skill in
natural knowledge, which that tribunal considered as the effects of sorcery, and
persecuted him accordingly; so that he had been fain to make a precipitate
retreat into France, where not finding his account in his talents, he was now
arrived in England, with a view of practising his art in London; and that in
consequence of a specimen which he had given to a company below, the choleric
gentleman had followed him up stairs to his own apartment, and assaulted him in
that inhospitable manner. He therefore earnestly begged that our hero would take
him under his protection; and if he entertained the least suspicion of his
employing preternatural means in the operations of his art, he would freely
communicate all the secrets in his possession.
    The youth dispelled his apprehension, by assuring him that he was in no
danger of suffering for his art in England, where, if ever he should be
questioned by the zeal of superstitious individuals, he had nothing to do but
appeal to the next justice of the peace, who would immediately acquit him of the
charge, and punish his accusers for their impertinence and indiscretion.
    He then told Gauntlet and the Welshman, that the stranger had a
