yadi,
was worth all the Scots, high or low, that ever pretended to be soldiers;
and would have sent them all headlong into the Black Sea, had they dared
to confront it on its shores; but why be angry with an ignorant, who
couples together Thor and Tzernebock? Ha! Ha!"

"You have read his novels?" said I.

"Yes, I read them now and then. I do not speak much English, but I can
read it well, and I have read some of his romances, and mean to read his
'Napoleon,' in the hope of finding Thor and Tzernebock coupled together
in it, as in his high-flying 'Ivanhoe.'"

"Come," said the jockey, "no more Dutch, whether high or low. I am tired
of it; unless we can have some English, I am off to bed."

"I should be very glad to hear some English," said I; "especially from
your mouth. Several things which you have mentioned, have awakened my
curiosity. Suppose you give us your history?"

"My history?" said the jockey. "A rum idea! however, lest conversation
should lag, I'll give it you. First of all, however, a glass of
champagne to each."

After we had each taken a glass of champagne, the jockey commenced his
history.

CHAPTER XLI

The Jockey's Tale--Thieves' Latin--Liberties with Coin--The Smasher in
Prison--Old Fulcher--Every One has His Gift--Fashion of the English.

"My grandfather was a shorter, and my father was a smasher; the one was
scragg'd, and the other lagg'd."

I here interrupted the jockey by observing that his discourse was, for
the greater part, unintelligible to me.

"I do not understand much English," said the Hungarian, who, having
replenished and resumed his mighty pipe, was now smoking away; "but, by
Isten, I believe it is the gibberish which that great ignorant Valther
Scott puts into the mouths of the folks he calls gypsies."

"Something like it, I confess," said I, "though this sounds more genuine
than his dialect, which he picked up out of the canting vocabulary at the
end of the 'English Rogue,' a book which, however despised, was written
by a remarkable genius. What do you call the speech you were using?"
said I, addressing myself to the jockey.

"Latin," said the jockey, very coolly, "that is, that dialect of it which
is used by the light-fingered gentry."

"He is right," said the Hungarian; "it is what the Germans call
Roth-Welsch: they call it so because there are a great many Latin words
in it, introduced by the priests, who, at the time of the Reformation,
being too laz