nd amongst the rest the priest. He did not come amongst the
first, but allowed us to settle and become a little quiet before he
showed himself; and after a day or two he paid us another visit, then
another, till at last his visits were daily.

"I did not like that Jack Priest; so I kept my eye upon all his motions.
Lord! how that Jack Priest did curry favour with our governor and the two
young ladies; and he curried, and curried, till he had got himself into
favour with the governor, and more especially with the two young ladies,
of whom their father was doatingly fond. At last the ladies took lessons
in Italian of the priest, a language in which he was said to be a grand
proficient, and of which they had hitherto known but very little; and
from that time his influence over them, and consequently over the old
governor, increased till the tables were turned, and he no longer curried
favour with them, but they with him; yes, as true as my leg aches, the
young ladies curried, and the old governor curried favour with that same
Priest; when he was with them, they seemed almost to hang on his lips,
that is, the young ladies; and as for the old governor, he never
contradicted him, and when the fellow was absent, which, by-the-bye, was
not often, it was 'Father so-and-so said this, and Father so-and-so said
that; Father so-and-so thinks we should do so-and-so, or that we should
not do so-and-so.' I at first thought that he must have given them
something, some philtre or the like; but one of the English
maid-servants, who had a kind of respect for me, and who saw much more
behind the scenes than I did, informed me that he was continually
instilling strange notions into their heads, striving, by every possible
method, to make them despise the religion of their own land, and take up
that of the foreign country in which they were. And sure enough, in a
little time, the girls had altogether left off going to an English
chapel, and were continually visiting places of Italian worship. The old
governor, it is true, still went to his church, but he appeared to be
hesitating between two opinions; and once when he was at dinner, he said
to two or three English friends, that since he had become better
acquainted with it, he had conceived a much more favourable opinion of
the Catholic religion than he had previously entertained. In a word, the
priest ruled the house, and everything was done according to his will and
pleasure; by degree