Lavengro George Borrow (free ebook reader for ipad TXT) 📖

“Is it possible?” said I.

“Good wages, a’n’t they?” said the man.

“First rate,” said I; “bonneting is more profitable than reviewing.”

“Anan?” said the man.

“Or translating; I don’t think the Armenian would have paid me at that rate for translating his Esop.”

“Who is he?” said the man.

“Esop?”

“No, I know what that is, Esop’s cant for a hunchback; but t’other?”

“You should know,” said I.

“Never saw the man in all my life.”

“Yes, you have,” said I, “and felt him too; don’t you remember the individual from whom you took the pocketbook?”

“Oh, that was he; well, the less said about that matter the better; I have left off that trade, and taken to this, which is a much better. Between ourselves, I am not sorry that I did not carry off that pocketbook; if I had, it might have encouraged me in the trade, in which, had I remained, I might have been lagged, sent abroad, as I had been already imprisoned; so I determined to leave it off at all hazards, though I was hard up, not having a penny in the world.”

“And wisely resolved,” said I, “it was a bad and dangerous trade; I wonder you should ever have embraced it.”

“It is all very well talking,” said the man, “but there is a reason for everything; I am the son of a Jewess, by a military officer,”⁠—and then the man told me his story. I shall not repeat the man’s story, it was a poor one, a vile one; at last he observed: “So that affair which you know of determined me to leave the filching trade, and take up with a more honest and safe one; so at last I thought of the pea and thimble, but I wanted funds, especially to pay for lessons at the hands of a master, for I knew little about it.”

“Well,” said I, “how did you get over that difficulty?”

“Why,” said the man, “I thought I should never have got over it. What funds could I raise? I had nothing to sell; the few clothes I had I wanted, for we of the thimble must always appear decent, or nobody would come near us. I was at my wits’ end; at last I got over my difficulty in the strangest way in the world.”

“What was that?”

“By an old thing which I had picked up some time before⁠—a book.”

“A book?” said I.

“Yes, which I had taken out of your lordship’s pocket one day as you were walking the streets in a great hurry. I thought it was a pocketbook at first, full of bank notes, perhaps,” continued he, laughing. “It was well for me, however, that it was not, for I should have soon spent the notes; as it was, I had flung the old thing down with an oath, as soon as I brought it home. When I was so hard up, however, after the affair with that friend of yours, I took it up one day, and thought I might make something by it to support myself a day with. Chance or something else led me into a grand shop; there was a man there who seemed to be the master, talking to a jolly, portly old gentleman, who seemed to be a country squire. Well, I went up to the first, and offered it for sale; he took the book, opened it at the titlepage, and then all of a sudden his eyes glistened, and he showed it to the fat, jolly gentleman, and his eyes glistened too, and I heard him say ‘How singular!’ and then the two talked together in a speech I didn’t understand⁠—I rather thought it was French, at any rate it wasn’t cant; and presently the first asked me what I would take for the book. Now I am not altogether a fool nor am I blind, and I had narrowly marked all that passed, and it came into my head that now was the time for making a man of myself, at any rate I could lose nothing by a little confidence; so I looked the man boldly in the face, and said: ‘I will have five guineas for that book, there a’n’t such another in the whole world.’ ‘Nonsense,’ said the first man, ‘there are plenty of them, there have been nearly fifty editions to my knowledge; I will give you five shillings.’ ‘No,’ said I, ‘I’ll not take it, for I don’t like to be cheated, so give me my book again’; and I attempted to take it away from the fat gentleman’s hand. ‘Stop,’ said the younger man, ‘are you sure that you won’t take less?’ ‘Not a farthing,’ said I; which was not altogether true, but I said so. ‘Well,’ said the fat gentleman, ‘I will give you what you ask;’ and sure enough he presently gave me the money; so I made a bow, and was leaving the shop, when it came into my head that there was something odd in all this, and, as I had got the money in my pocket, I turned back, and, making another bow, said: ‘May I be so bold as to ask why you gave me all this money for that ’ere dirty book? When I came into the shop, I should have been glad to get a shilling for it; but I saw you wanted it, and asked five guineas.’ Then they looked at one another, and smiled, and shrugged up their shoulders. Then the first man, looking at me, said: ‘Friend, you have been a little too sharp for us; however, we can afford to forgive you, as my friend here has long been in quest of this particular book; there are plenty of editions, as I told you, and a common copy is not worth five shillings; but this is a first edition, and a copy of the first edition is worth its weight in gold.’ ”

“So, after all, they outwitted you,” I observed.

“Clearly,” said the man; “I