apid and
vigorous, and as he hurried along the streets, he would glance to the
right and left with a pair of big eyes like plums, and on recognising any
one would exalt a pair of grizzled eyebrows, and slightly kiss a tawny
and ungloved hand. At certain hours of the day he might be seen entering
the doors of female boarding-schools, generally with a book in his hand,
and perhaps another just peering from the orifice of a capacious back
pocket; and at a certain season of the year he might be seen, dressed in
white, before the altar of a certain small popish chapel, chanting from
the breviary in very intelligible Latin, or perhaps reading from the desk
in utterly unintelligible English. Such was my preceptor in the French
and Italian tongues. "Exul sacerdos; vone banished priest. I came into
England twenty-five year ago, 'my dear.'" {142}

CHAPTER XV

Monsieur Dante--Condemned Musket--Sporting--Sweet Rivulet--The Earl's
Home--The Pool--The Sonorous Voice--What dost Thou Read?--Man of
Peace--Zohar and Mishna--Money-changers.

So I studied French and Italian under the tuition of the banished priest,
to whose house I went regularly every evening to receive instruction. I
made considerable progress in the acquisition of the two languages. I
found the French by far the most difficult, chiefly on account of the
accent, which my master himself possessed in no great purity, being a
Norman by birth. The Italian was my favourite.

"_Vous serez_ _un jour un grand philologue_, _mon cher_," said the old
man, on our arriving at the conclusion of Dante's Hell.

"I hope I shall be something better," said I, "before I die, or I shall
have lived to little purpose."

"That's true, my dear! philologist--one small poor dog. What would you
wish to be?"

"Many things sooner than that; for example, I would rather be like him
who wrote this book."

"_Quoi_, _Monsieur Dante_? He was a vagabond, my dear, forced to fly
from his country. No, my dear, if you would be like one poet, be like
Monsieur Boileau; he is the poet."

"I don't think so."

"How, not think so? He wrote very respectable verses; lived and died
much respected by everybody. T'other, one bad dog, forced to fly from
his country--died with not enough to pay his undertaker."

"Were you not forced to flee from your country?"

"That very true; but there is much difference between me and this Dante.
He fled from country because he had one bad tongue which