"'We do not believe it,' replied several grave voices. 'It is not possible.' "'It is not possible, say you? I tell you it is.--Come forward, Balseiro, you who have been in prison all your life, and are always boasting that you can speak the crabbed _Gitano_, though I say you know nothing of it--come forward and speak to his worship in the crabbed _Gitano_.' "A low, slight, but active figure stepped forward. He was in his shirt sleeves, and wore a _montero_ cap; his features were handsome, but they were those of a demon. "He spoke a few words in the broken Gypsy slang of the prison, inquiring of me whether I had ever been in the condemned cell, and whether I knew what a _gitana_ was. "'_Vamos Inglesito_,' shouted Sevilla, in a voice of thunder, 'answer the _monro_ in the crabbed _Gitano_.' "I answered the robber, for such he was, and one, too, whose name will live for many years in the ruffian histories of Madrid--I answered him in a speech of some length, in the dialect of the Estremenian Gypsies. "'I believe it is the crabbed _Gitano_,' muttered Balseiro. 'It is either that or English, for I understand not a word of it.' "'Did I not say to you,' cried the bullfighter, 'that you knew nothing of the crabbed _Gitano_? But this _Inglesito_ does. I understood all he said. _Vaya_, there is none like him for the crabbed _Gitano_. He is a good _ginete_, too; next to myself, there is none like him, only he rides with stirrup leathers too short.--_Inglesito_, if you have need of money, I will lend you my purse. All I have is at your service, and that is not a little; I have just gained four thousand _chules_ by the lottery. Courage, Englishman! Another cup. I will pay all--I, Sevilla!' "And he clapped his hand repeatedly on his breast, reiterating, 'I, Sevilla! I--'" Borrow breaks up his own style in the same way with foreign words. As Ford said in his "Edinburgh Review" criticism: "To use a Gypsy term for a linguist, 'he knows the seven jargons'; his conversations and his writings resemble an intricate mosiac, of which we see the rich effect, without comprehending the design. . . . Mr. Borrow, in whose mouth are the tongues of Babel, selects, as he dashes along _currente calamo_, the exact word for any idiom which best expresses the precise idea which sparkles in his mind." This habit of Borrow's should be compared with Lamb's archaisms, but, better still, with Robert Burton's interlardation of English and Latin in "The Anatomy of Melancholy."