The New-York Weekly Magazine, or Miscellaneous Repository: Forming an Interesting Collection of Original and Select Literary Productions in Prose and Verse
General
The New-York Weekly Magazine, or Miscellaneous Repository: Forming an Interesting Collection of Original and Select Literary Productions in Prose and Verse
American periodicals
copies of letters which the _Unknown_ had wrote on my account to Pinto
Ribeiro, privy counsellor of the Duke of Br**za. Here follows the
translation:
“Your Excellency knows how carefully we endeavoured to conceal the place
of our secret meetings from the intrusion of prying strangers, by
spreading the report that it was haunted. However, this did not deter a
young nobleman who is on his travels, from entering last night the
castle, in company of his tutor, with the intention of forming an
acquaintance with the ghosts. No sooner had we been informed of their
being arrived at the castle, when Georgio de M**** offered to chastise
them for their inquisitiveness, fixing twelve o’clock at night for the
execution of his design. He disguised himself as the most dreadful
spectre which ever has appeared at midnight. Concluding from the
undertaking of the two strangers that they were men of spirit and
resolution, he put on a coat of mail, and covered his face with a mask
made of bull-skins, in order to be proof against swords and pistols;
a precaution which, as the event proved, was not superfluous. Thus
accoutred, he approached at twelve o’clock the apartment of the
strangers with a tremendous noise. Their door was bolted from within as
he had apprehended; however, all the locks and bolts in the castle being
constructed in such a manner that they can be opened from without,
Georgio found it not difficult to push their door open. I remained at
the threshold in order to wait the event. Georgio no sooner had entered
the room with a design to chastise the young man who was sitting near
the window, at a table on which two candles were burning, than his tutor
started up, aiming a blow at him from behind which would have done his
business at once, if Georgio had not been protected by his coat of mail.
The pretended spectre threw the old gentleman so violently on the ground
that he was unable to move a limb. This sight entirely disconcerted the
young man, who was on the point of firing a pistol at his frightful
visitor, rushed on him with a thundering voice, extinguished the
candles, and beating him in such a manner as if he was going to beat him
to atoms. Georgio’s dress being anointed with a salve composed of
phosphorus, he appeared in the dark, to be all on fire. The dreadful
impression which this sight produced on the mind of the young man was
increased by the howling, groaning, and the tremendous noise which some
of our company raised in the apartment over his head; he seemed to be
senseless. As soon as Georgio perceived his helpless state, he lighted
the candles with phosphorus, and left the apartment which he carefully
bolted and locked.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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