round as
if he was addressing somebody, and began rapidly speaking a language
unknown to me. "It is Arabic," he said; "a bad patois I own. I learned
it in Barbary, when I was a prisoner amongst the Moors. In anno 1609,
bin ick aldus ghekledt gheghaen. Ha! you doubt me: look at me well. At
least I am like--"

Perhaps some of my readers remember a paper of which the figure of a man
carrying a barrel formed the initial letter,* and which I copied from an
old spoon now in my possession. As I looked at Mr. Pinto I do declare he
looked so like the figure on that old piece of plate that I started and
felt very uneasy. "Ha!" said he, laughing through his false teeth (I
declare they were false--I could see utterly toothless gums working
up and down behind the pink coral), "you see I wore a beard den; I am
shafed now; perhaps you tink I am A SPOON. Ha, ha!" And as he laughed he
gave a cough which I thought would have coughed his teeth out, his glass
eye out, his wig off, his very head off; but he stopped this convulsion
by stumping across the room and seizing a little bottle of bright pink
medicine, which, being opened, spread a singular acrid aromatic odor
through the apartment; and I thought I saw--but of this I cannot take an
affirmation--a light green and violet flame flickering round the neck of
the phial as he opened it. By the way, from the peculiar stumping noise
which he made in crossing the bare-boarded apartment, I knew at once
that my strange entertainer had a wooden leg. Over the dust which lay
quite thick on the boards, you could see the mark of one foot very neat
and pretty, and then a round O, which was naturally the impression made
by the wooden stump. I own I had a queer thrill as I saw that mark, and
felt a secret comfort that it was not CLOVEN.

* This refers to an illustrated edition of the work.

In this desolate apartment in which Mr. Pinto had invited me to see him,
there were three chairs, one bottomless, a little table on which you
might put a breakfast-tray, and not a single other article of furniture.
In the next room, the door of which was open, I could see a magnificent
gilt dressing-case, with some splendid diamond and ruby shirt-studs
lying by it, and a chest of drawers, and a cupboard apparently full of
clothes.

Remembering him in Baden-Baden in great magnificence, I wondered at his
present denuded state. "You have a house elsewhere, Mr. Pinto?" I said.

"Many," says he. "I have apartm