Page:Adventures of Roderick Random.pdf/49

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

( 49 )

a blanket he had borrowed; for his body was so sore and swelled that he could not bear to be confined in wearing apparel.—He was treated with the utmost tenderness by my mistress and her daughter; but Lavement himself could not forbear expressing his joy by several malicious grins—As to myself, nobody can doubt my gratification, which I had every day an opportunity of seeing my revenge protracted on the body of my adversary, by the sores and ulcers I had been the cause of. By the time he had got a new scarf skin, he thought it high time to decamp, which he performed one night without beat of drum, after having robbed his own servant of every thing that belonged to him, except the clothes on his back.

About this time, my friend Strap informed me of an offer he had to go abroad with a gentleman, in quality of Valet de Chambre. I insisted upon his accepting the proposal, which he at last determined to embrace, with great reluctance, and in a few days took his leave of me, shedding a flood of tears, which I could not behold without emotion.

I soon began to look upon myself as a gentleman in reality; learned to dance of a Frenchman whom I cured of a fashionable distemper; frequented plays during the holidays; became an oracle of an ale-

E
house