I recollect one day after the officers had drunk a very sufficient quantity of his claret and champagne, being a little elevated, they insisted upon Solomon bringing them out some Balm of Gilead as a finish, and they cleared off about two dozen one guinea bottles. The old gentleman made no objection to provide it as often as they called for more, and they separated; but the next day he sent them all their bills in for the said Balm of Gilead, observing, that although they were welcome to his wine and table, that he must be paid for his medicine. But to proceed.
The Englishman travelled with the king’s messenger; most of his baggage had been sent on, but he would not part with his medicine, and this was all in the vehicle with himself. As they passed the Pyrenees they were stopped by the banditti, who dragged them out of the carriage, after shooting the postilion, and made them lie with their faces on the ground, with guards over them, while they rifled the carriage. They soon came to the packages of medicine, and observing that Le Roi was upon all the bottles, and knowing that they had possession of a king’s messenger, they imagined that this was some liquor sent as a present to the King of Spain; they tasted it, and found that, like other quack medicines, it was very strong and very good.
Each man took his bottle, drank the king’s health, and mirth and revelry took place, until they had consumed all that the Englishman had brought with him. Now there is a great difference between taking a table-spoonful, and six or seven bottles per man; and so it proved, for they had hardly finished the last case before they found that the medicine acted very powerfully as a cathartic; the whole banditti were simultaneously attacked with a most violent cholera; they disappeared one by one; at last the guards could contain themselves no longer, and they went off too. The two prisoners, perceiving this, rose from the ground, mounted the horses and galloped off as fast as they could. They gave notice to the authorities of the first town they arrived at, not four miles distant, and a large body of cavalry were sent out immediately. The effects of the medicine had been so violent that the whole of the banditti were found near to the spot where they had drunk the king’s health, in such a state of suffering and exhaustion that they could make no efforts to escape, and were all secured, and eventually hung.
Chapter Thirty Nine.
Lausanne.
I recollect some one saying, that in walking out you should never look up in the air, but always on the ground, as, by the former practice, you were certain never to find any thing, although you might by the latter. So if you will not enter into conversation, you are not likely to obtain much information; whereas if you do, you will always chance to obtain some, even from the quarters the least promising. I was seated on the box of the carriage, with the Swiss voiturier—and asked him, “If it were not a lucrative profession?”
“It may appear so to you, sir,” replied he, “from the price paid for the horses, but it is not so. All we gain, is in five months in the year; the seven months of winter, we have to feed our horses without employment for them, that is, generally speaking.”
“But have you no employment for them in the winter?”