'And why do they keep you down?' asked I.
'Because,' answered he, 'we are of one religion, and they of another; and they say our religion is so bad, that it would make us keep them down, if they did not keep us down.'
'Then,' said I, 'you ought to be greatly obliged to them for keeping you down; because that is doing what they condemn, lest you should do it. Now it is the highest possible test of good-nature, to become criminal ourselves, in order to keep our friends virtuous.'
'A wise legislator,' said the minstrel, 'ought not to forget the eighteenth century, in his retrospection to the sixteenth, nor in his anticipation of the twentieth.'
'I know nothing of anticskippation,' said Jerry, 'but I will tell you a bit of a story. When I first went to London, and was poor, I used to dine in a cellar, with other Irishmen, where the knives and forks were chained to the table, for fear we should steal them; though in my mind, the surest way to make a rogue, is to let him know that you think him one. Well, when we began to grow rich, we got a spirit, and broke the chains, and paid for them; and broke them again, and paid for them again, and so on. At last the master began to see that the same spirit which made us break the chains would prevent us from stealing the knives and forks; so he took off the chains, and then his table was no disgrace, and we brought more company to it, and he made his fortune.'
The minstrel and warden now retired to their allotted place of rest—the barouche. Each was to keep watch in turn at the castle gate, and to toll the hour on the bell.
The wind still moaned round the turret; and now the fire, ghastly in decay, but just tinged the projecting folds of the hangings. Dismal looked the bed as I drew near; and while I lifted the velvet pall to creep beneath, I shivered, and almost expected to behold the apparition of a human face, starting from under it. When I lay down, I kept my eyes quite closed, for fear of seeing something; nor was it till the third bell had tolled that I fell asleep.
Adieu.
LETTER XXXVIII
I rose early this morning, and summoned Jerry to the Black Chamber, for my head was teeming with the most important projects.