Tell me what has befallen you; and if I can do
anything for you, in restoring you to your country or your friends,
you shall command my interest.'
"I had great need of a friend then, and I thought now was the time
to secure one. So I began and told him the moving tale I have told
you. But I soon perceived that I had kept by the naked truth too
unvarnishedly, and thereby quite overshot my mark. When he
learned that he was sitting in a wretched corner of an irregular
house, with a felon, who had so lately been scourged and
banished as a swindler and impostor, his modest nature took the
alarm, and he was shocked, instead of being moved with pity. His
eye fixed on some of the casual stripes on my arm, and from that
moment he became restless and impatient to be gone. I tried some
gentle arts to retain him, but in vain; so, after paying both the
landlady and me for pleasures he had neither tasted nor asked, he
took his leave.
"I showed him downstairs; and, just as be turned the corner of the
next land, a man came rushing violently by him; exchanged looks
with him, and came running up to me. He appeared in great
agitation, and was quite out of breath; and, taking my hand in his,
we ran upstairs together without speaking, and were instantly in
the apartment I had left, where a stoup of wine still stood
untasted.
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