y, to whom, on taking leave, he made
a handsome present, and departed with their united blessings,
to the astonishment of myself, and what looked very like terror
in our Spanish guide.

I was, as the phrase goes, dying with curiosity, and, as soon
as we mounted our horses, exclaimed, 'Where, in the name of
goodness, did you pick up your acquaintance and the language of
these extraordinary people?' 'Some years ago, in Moultan,' he
replied. 'And by what means do you possess such apparent
influence over them?' But the 'Unknown' had already said more
than he perhaps wished on the subject. He drily replied that he
had more than once owed his life to gipsies, and had reason to
know them well; but this was said in a tone which precluded all
further queries on my part. The subject was never again
broached, and we returned in silence to the fonda....

_May 7th._--Pouring with rain all day, during which I was
mostly in the society of the 'Unknown.' This is a most
extraordinary character, and the more I see of him the more I
am puzzled. He appears acquainted with everybody and
everything, but apparently unknown to every one himself. Though
his figure bespeaks youth--and by his own account his age does
not exceed thirty--yet the snows of eighty winters could not
have whitened his locks more completely than they are. But in
his dark and searching eye there is an almost supernatural
penetration and lustre, which, were I inclined to superstition,
might induce me to set down its possessor as a second Melmoth;
and in that character he often appears to me during the
troubled rest I sometimes obtain through the medium of the
great soother, 'laudanum.'

The next most interesting figure in the Borrow gallery of this period is
Don Luis de Usoz y Rio, who was a good friend to Borrow during the whole
of his sojourn in Spain. It was he who translated Borrow's appeal to the
Spanish Prime Minister to be permitted to distribute Scio's New
Testament. He watched over Borrow with brotherly solicitude, and wrote
him more than one excellent letter, of which the two following from my
Borrow Papers, the last written at the close of the Spanish period, are
the most interesting:

To Mr. George Borrow

(_Translated from the Spanish_)

PIAZZA DI SPAGNA 17, ROME, _7 April 1838._

DEAR FRIE