The Bible in Spain or the journeys adventures, and imprisonments of an Englishman in an attempt to circulate the scriptures in the Peninsula
George Borrow
Paperback
(RareBooksClub.com, Sept. 13, 2013)
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1842 edition. Excerpt: ...is nothing lacking; the very leper finds an inn here." "I have no objection to your showing me the house," I replied, "but it must be at a distance, for enter it I will not." Thereupon he conducted me down the road which leads towards Padron and Vigo, and pointing to two or three huts, exclaimed, "That is our leper-house." "It appears a miserable place," I replied: "what accommodation may there be for the patients, and who attends to their wants?" "They are left to themselves," answered the bookseller, "and probably sometimes perish from neglect: the place at one time was endowed, and had rents which were appropriated to its support, but even these have been sequestered during the late troubles. At present, the least unclean of the lepers generally takes his station by the roadside, and begs for the rest. See there he is now." And sure enough the leper in his shining scales, and halfnaked, was seated beneath a ruined wall. We dropped money into the hat of the unhappy being, and passed on. "A bad disorder that," said my friend. "I confess that I, who have seen so many of them, am by no means fond of the company of lepers. Indeed, I wish that they would never enter my shop, as they occasionally do to beg. Nothing is more infectious, as I have heard, than leprosy: there is one very virulent species, however, which is particularly dreaded here, the elephantine: those who die of it should, according to law, be burnt, and their ashes scattered to the winds: for if the body of such a leper be interred in the field of the dead, the disorder is forthwith communicated to all the corses even below the earth. Such, at least, is our idea in these parts. Law-suits...