Lavengro: The Scholar, the Gypsy, the PriestBorrow, George
General
Lavengro: The Scholar, the Gypsy, the Priest
Borrow, George
England -- Fiction; Romanies -- Fiction
I spent a happy day with my brother. On the morrow he went again to the
painter, with whom he dined; I did not go with him. On his return he
said: "The painter has been asking a great many questions about you, and
expressed a wish that you would sit to him as Pharaoh; he thinks you
would make a capital Pharaoh". "I have no wish to appear on canvas,"
said I; "moreover, he can find much better Pharaohs than myself; and, if
he wants a real Pharaoh, there is a certain Mr. Petulengro."
"Petulengro?" said my brother; "a strange kind of fellow came up to me
some time ago in our town, and asked me about you; when I inquired his
name, he told me Petulengro. No, he will not do, he is too short; by-the-
bye, do you not think that figure of Moses is somewhat short?" And then
it appeared to me that I had thought the figure of Moses somewhat short,
and I told my brother so. "Ah!" said my brother.
On the morrow my brother departed with the painter for the old town, and
there the painter painted the mayor. I did not see the picture for a
great many years, when, chancing to be at the old town, I beheld it.
The original mayor was a mighty, portly man, with a bull's head, black
hair, body like that of a dray horse, and legs and thighs corresponding;
a man six foot high at the least. To his bull's head, black hair and
body the painter had done justice; there was one point, however, in which
the portrait did not correspond with the original--the legs were
disproportionably short, the painter having substituted his own legs for
those of the mayor, which when I perceived I rejoiced that I had not
consented to be painted as Pharaoh, for, if I had, the chances are that
he would have served me in exactly a similar way as he had served Moses
and the mayor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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