“A dreary summer and autumn passed by, and were succeeded by as gloomy a winter. I still proceeded with ‘The Bible in Spain.’ The winter passed and spring came with cold dry winds and occasional sunshine, whereupon I arose, shouted, and mounting my horse, even Sidi
Habismilk, I scoured all the surrounding district, and thought but little of ‘The Bible in Spain.’
“So I rode about the country, over the heaths, and through the green lanes of my native land, occasionally visiting friends at a distance, and sometimes, for variety’s sake, I staid at home and amused myself by catching huge pike, which lie perdue in certain deep ponds skirted with lofty reeds, upon my land, and to which there is a communication from the lagoon by a deep and narrow watercourse.—I had almost forgotten ‘The Bible in Spain.’
“Then came the summer with much heat and sunshine, and then I would lie for hours in the sun and recall the sunny days I had spent in Andalusia, and my thoughts were continually reverting to Spain, and at last I remembered that ‘The Bible in Spain’ was still unfinished; whereupon I arose and said: This loitering profiteth nothing,—and I hastened to my summer-house by the side of the lake, and there I thought and wrote, and every day I repaired to the same place, and thought and wrote until I had finished ‘The Bible in Spain.’
“And at the proper season ‘The Bible in Spain’ was given to the world; and the world, both learned and unlearned, was delighted with ‘The Bible in Spain,’ and the highest authority said, ‘This is a much better book than the Gypsies;’ and the next great authority said, ‘Something betwixt Le Sage and Bunyan.’ ‘A far more entertaining work than Don Quixote,’ exclaimed a literary lady. ‘Another Gil Blas,’ said the cleverest writer in Europe. ‘Yes,’ exclaimed the cool sensible Spectator, ‘a Gil Blas in water colours.’
“A Gil Blas in water colours”—that, he says himself, pleased him better than all the rest. He liked to think that out of his adventures in distributing Bibles in Spain, out of letters describing his work to his employers, the Bible Society, he had made a narrative to be compared
with the fictitious life and adventures of that gentle Spanish rogue, Gil Blas of Santillana. No wonder that he saw himself a public figure to be treated reverently, nay! heroically. And so when he comes to consider somebody’s suggestion that the Gypsies are of Jewish origin, he relates a “little adventure” of his own, bringing in Mr. Petulengro and the Jewish servant whom he had brought back with him after his last visit to Spain. He mounts the heroic figure upon an heroic horse:
“So it came to pass,” he says, “that one day I was scampering over a heath, at some distance from my present home: I was mounted upon the good horse Sidi Habismilk, and the Jew of Fez, swifter than the wind, ran by the side of the good horse Habismilk, when what should I see at a corner of the heath but the encampment of certain friends of mine; and the chief of that camp, even Mr. Petulengro, stood before the encampment, and his adopted daughter, Miss Pinfold, stood beside him.
“Myself.—‘Kosko divvus, [{17a}] Mr. Petulengro! I am glad to see you: how are you getting on?’
“Mr. Petulengro.—‘How am I getting on? as well as I can. What will you have for that nokengro?’ [{17b}]