"
Gauntlet seemed to enter into the sentiments of this Welsh reformer,
and actually laid hold on the delinquent's shoulder, crying, "D--n
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.
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