The painter, seeing himself addressed by a friar, who, while
he spoke, bowed with great complaisance, imagined that he was a
begging brother come to supplicate his charity; and his attention
being quite engrossed by the design he was making, he patted the
priest's shaven crown with his hand, saying, Oter tems, oter tems,
and then resumed his pencil with great earnestness. The ecclesiastic,
perceiving that the stranger did not comprehend his meaning, pulled
him by the sleeve, and explained himself in the Latin tongue: upon
which Pallet, provoked at his intrusion, cursed him aloud for an
impudent beggarly son of a w--, and, taking out a shilling, flung
it upon the pavement, with manifest signs of indignation.
Some of the common people, enraged to see their religion contemned,
and their priests insulted at the very altar, rose from their
seats, and, surrounding the astonished painter, one of the number
snatched his book from his hand, and tore it into a thousand pieces.
Frightened as he was, he could not help crying "Fire and fagots!
all my favourite ideas are gone to wreck!" and was in danger of
being very roughly handled by the crowd, had not Peregrine stepped
in, and assured them, that he was a poor unhappy gentleman,
who laboured under a transport of the brain.
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