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
Notwithstanding these precautions, the servant became very uneasy in his
mind, and returned privately to the surgeon, under whose care he had
left the wounded infant. He found him much mended, and dreading a
discovery of the fraud put on his cruel master, which would have
endangered his own life, as well as that of the young nobleman, whom he
was now determined to preserve, he conveyed him to a distant province,
and committed him to the care of an honest peasant, who for a
considerable sum in hand promised to take particular notice both of his
nurture and safety.
The young duke remained six years in this situation, when the same
domestic appeared, and to rid himself effectually of every probable idea
of being discovered, brought the child to Malaga, where he sold him to
one Jacob de Mendez, a Portuguese Jew, who was about to embark for
Constantinople, at the same time telling him, that being the natural son
of a Spanish nobleman, by a young lady of the first distinction at the
court, it was necessary on several accounts, that so strong a proof of
frailty should be removed to a great distance. The Jew paid the price,
promised secrecy, embarked with his slave, or pupil, for the Levant, and
happily arrived at the port of Modon, in the Morea, from whence he went
by land to Constantinople, where we will leave him for the present, and
return to the uncle in Spain, whose project of murdering his innocent
ward was not attended with the satisfaction he had at first imagined.
About two years after, a strange malady, unknown to the most experienced
physicians, broke into the old nobleman’s house, and carried off every
one of his numerous issue in less than a month. He himself was attacked
by a malignant fever, in which he remained delirious for above six
weeks. At length he recovered, and penetrated with the keenest remorse
for the unworthy steps he had taken to destroy his innocent pupil, the
first use he made of his understanding was a participation of his griefs
to the servant who had been his accomplice in the crime, who, believing
all danger from his lord’s resentment at an end, confessed the whole
truth. This indeed appeased in some measure, the agonies with which the
Count’s mind was tortured; he now conceived a glimmering ray of hope
that he might one day be instrumental in restoring the young nobleman to
his lawful possessions; Providence, moved by his deep contrition, seemed
to applaud the just design; he recovered his health, and took every
method that prudence could suggest, but his enquiries were a long time
fruitless. Happening, however, to be at Marseilles when the Cæsar,
a ship in the Levant trade, arrived in the port, the disconsolate count,
learned from the captain, who had sailed from Constantinople about six
weeks before, that the Portuguese Jew, to whom the young duke was sold
by the servant at Malaga, had presented him to lord Paget, ambassador
from England, who had returned to London before the French vessel set
sail.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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