'But you are subject to instant execution at the pleasure of the Judge?'

'Be it so,' returned the Bohemian; 'I can but die so much the sooner.'

'And to imprisonment also,' said the Scot; 'and where then is your boasted freedom?'

'In my thoughts,' said the Bohemian, 'which no chains can bind; while yours, even when your limbs are free, remain fettered by your laws and your superstitions, your dreams of local attachment, and your fantastic visions of civil policy. Such as I are free in spirit when our limbs are chained. You are imprisoned in mind, even when your limbs are most at freedom.'

Transcriber's note:
No anchor for this footnote could be found on this page. [14]

'Yet the freedom of your thoughts,' said the Scot, 'relieves not the pressure of the gyves on your limbs.'

'For a brief time that may be endured,' answered the vagrant, 'and if within that period I cannot extricate myself, and fail of relief from my comrades, I can always die, and death is the most perfect freedom of all.'

Again, when asked in his last hour what are his hopes for the future, the gypsy, after denying the existence of the soul, declares that his anticipations are:

'To be resolved into the elements. * * * My hope and trust and expectation is, that the mysterious frame of humanity shall melt into the general mass of nature, to be recompounded in the other forms with which she daily supplies those which daily disappear, and return under different forms,—the watery particles to streams and showers, the earthy parts to enrich their mother earth, the airy portions to wanton in the breeze, and those of fire to supply the blaze of Aldebaran and his brethren. In this faith I have lived, and will die in it. Hence! begone!—disturb me no further! I have spoken the last word that mortal ears shall listen to!'

That such a strain as this would be absurd from 'Mr. Petulengro,' or any other of the race as portrayed by Borrow, is evident enough. Whether it is inappropriate, however, in the mouth of one of the first corners of the people in Europe, of direct Hindustanee blood, is another question. Let us examine it.