{107} When Borrow (Lavengro, that is), was in London, his friend Francis Ardry warned him against a certain papistical propagandist:  “A strange fellow—­a half Italian, half English priest . . . he is fond of a glass of gin and water—­and over a glass of gin and water cold, with a lump of sugar in it, he has been more communicative, perhaps, than was altogether prudent.  Were I my own master, I would kick him, politics and religious movements, to a considerable distance.”

{110} During his travels after his abandonment of Grub Street, “Lavengro” frequently came upon the traces of the man in black.  While sojourning for one night with a hospitable though superstitious acquaintance, whom he met after leaving Salisbury, “Lavengro” heard the story of the Rev. Mr. Platitude, a sacerdotalist of weak intellects who had been cajoled from his lawful allegiance to the “good, quiet Church of England,” by the wiles of a sharking priest come over from Italy to proselytize and to plunder.  From what he then heard of the sharking priest, by putting two and two together, Lavengro was now able to identify him with the “man in black.”  Subsequently he heard of the efforts of the same clever dialectician to overcome the Methodist preacher Peter Williams—­efforts which collapsed upon the appearance of the preacher’s wife Winifred.  “Wife, wife,” muttered the disconcerted priest, “if the fool has a wife he will never do for us.”  In the course of his wanderings this nineteenth-century S. Augustine often gave himself out to be a teacher of elocution.

{117} The man in black was completely mystified by the knowledge of his own past life which this remark revealed (see Chap.  IX. infra.).  There were, as have been seen, a variety of threads connecting the man in black with definite scenes in the memory of Lavengro, though the latter did not happen to have seen the “prowling priest” in the flesh before this occasion.  While in London Lavengro frequently met a certain Armenian merchant, who much resented the pretensions of the Roman Papa:  that he, the Papa, had more to say in heaven than the Armenian patriarch, and that the hillocks of Rome were higher than the ridges of Ararat.  “The Papa of Rome,” said the Armenian to Lavengro, “has at present many emissaries in this country, in order to seduce the people from their own quiet religion to the savage heresy of Rome; this fellow” (describing the man in black) “came to me partly in the hope of converting me, but principally to extort money for the purpose of furthering the designs of Rome in this country.  I humoured the fellow at first, keeping him in play for nearly a month, deceiving and laughing at him.  At last he discovered that he could make nothing of me, and departed with the scowl of Caiaphas, whilst I cried after him, ’The roots of Ararat are deeper than those of Rome.’”

This same Armenian subsequently offered Lavengro a desk in his office opposite his deaf Moldavian clerk, having surmised that he would make an excellent merchant because he squinted like a true Armenian.  Unhappily for the Flaming Tinman and for Isopel Berners, the word-master refused this singular offer.