shoulder of his beaſt, driving it with all the goodwill in the world to the very butt, and at the ſame time adroitly tucking his blue cloth capa under his right arm, and flinging the ſkirt over the left ſhouler en cavalier, began to lay about him with a ſtout ſhen ſapling upon the ears, pole, and cheeks of the recreant mule. The fire now flaſhed from a flair of Andaluſian eyes, as black as charcoal and a lot leſs inflammable, and taking the segara from his, mouth, with which he had vainly hoped to have realed his noſtrils in a ſharp winter's evening by the way, raiſed ſuch a thundering troop of angels, saints, and martyrs, from St. Michael downwards, not forgetting his own nameſake Saint Nicolas de Tolentino by the way, that if curſes could have made the mule to go, the diſpute would have been soon ended, but not a ſaint could make her ſtir any other ways than upwards and downwards at a stand. A ſmall troop of mendicant friars were at this moment conducting the hoſt to a dying man. ———" Nicolas Pedroſa," ſays an old friar, “ be patient with your beaſt, and ſpare your blaſphemies; remember Balaam.”———“ Ah, father," relied Pedroſa, " Balaam cudgelled his beaſt till ſhe ſpoke, ſo will I mine till the roars.”———"Fie, fie, profane fellow,” cries another of the fraternity. "Go about your work, friend," quoth Nicolas, "and let me go about mine; I warrant it is the more preſſing of the two; your patient is going out of the world, mine is coming into it." "Hear him," cries a third, "hear the vile wretch, how he blaſphemes the body of God."———And When the troop paſſed flowly on to the tinkling of the bell.
A man muſt know nothing of a mule's ears, who does not know what a paſſion they have for the tinkling of a bell, and no ſooner had the jingling
