I did not see my friend the postillion till the next morning, when
he gave me an account of the adventures he had met with on his
expedition. It appeared that he had driven the man in black and
the Reverend Platitude across the country by roads and lanes which
he had some difficulty in threading. At length, when he had
reached a part of the country where he had never been before, the
man in black pointed out to him a house near the corner of a wood,
to which he informed him they were bound. The postillion said it
was a strange-looking house, with a wall round it; and, upon the
whole, bore something of the look of a madhouse. There was already
a postchaise at the gate, from which three individuals had
alighted--one of them the postillion said was a mean-looking
scoundrel, with a regular petty-larceny expression in his
countenance. He was dressed very much like the man in black, and
the postillion said that he could almost have taken his Bible oath
that they were both of the same profession. The other two he said
were parsons, he could swear that, though he had never seen them
before; there could be no mistake about them. Church of England
parsons the postillion swore they were, with their black coats,
white cravats, and airs, in which clumsiness and conceit were most
funnily blended--Church of England parsons of the Platitude
description, who had been in Italy, and seen the Pope, and kissed
his toe, and picked up a little broken Italian, and come home
greater fools than they went forth.
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