te's third sally.
"Forsi altro cantara con miglior plectro."
The noble mind may be clouded by adversity, but cannot be
wholly concealed; for true merit shines by a light of its
own, and, glimmering through the rents and crannies of
indigence, is perceived, respected, and honored by the
generous and the great.
A SHORT STORY OF WHAT HAPPENED ONCE IN SEVILLE.
A certain man, being deranged in his intellects, was placed by his
relations in the mad-house of Seville. He had taken his degrees in the
canon law at Ossuna; but had it been at Salamanca, many are of opinion
he would, nevertheless, have been mad. This graduate, after some years'
confinement, took into his head that he was quite in his right senses,
and therefore wrote to the archbishop, beseeching him, with great
earnestness and apparently with much reason, that he would be pleased to
deliver him from that miserable state of confinement in which he lived;
since, through the mercy of God, he had regained his senses; adding that
his relations, in order to enjoy part of his estate, kept him still
there, and, in spite of the clearest evidence, would insist upon his
being mad as long as he lived.
The archbishop, prevailed upon by the many sensible epistles he received
from him, sent one of his chaplains to the keeper of the mad-house to
inquire into the truth of what the licentiate had alleged, and also to
talk with him, and if it appeared that he was in his senses, to set him
at liberty. The chaplain accordingly went to the rector, who assured him
that the man was still insane, for though he sometimes talked very
sensibly, it was seldom for any length of time without betraying his
derangement; as he would certainly find on conversing with him. The
chaplain determined to make the trial, and during the conversation of
more than an hour, could perceive no symptom of incoherence in his
discourse; on the contrary, he spoke with so much sedateness and
judgment that the chaplain could not entertain a doubt of the sanity of
his intellects. Among other things he assured him that the keeper was
bribed by his relations to persist in reporting him to be deranged; so
that his large estate was his great misfortune, to enjoy which his
enemies had recourse to fraud, and pretended to doubt of the mercy of
Heaven in restoring him from the condition of a brute to that of a man.
In short, he talked so plausibly that he made the rector appear venal
and corrupt, his
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