CHAPTER VIII

Summary

On the thirty-first of December, 1838, I again visited Spain for the third time. After staying a day or two at Cadiz, I repaired to Seville, from which place I proposed starting for Madrid with the mail post. Here I tarried about a fortnight, enjoying the delicious climate of this terrestrial Paradise, and the balmy breezes of the Andalusian winter, even as I had done two years previously. Before leaving Seville I visited the bookseller, my correspondent, who informed me that seventy-six copies of the hundred Testaments entrusted to his care had been placed in embargo by the government last summer, and that they were at the present time in the possession of the ecclesiastical governor, whereupon I determined to visit this functionary also, with the view of making inquiries concerning the property.

He lived in a large house in the Pajaria, or straw-market. He was a very old man, between seventy and eighty, and, like the generality of those who wear the sacerdotal habit in this city, was a fierce persecuting Papist. I imagine that he scarcely believed his ears when his two grand-nephews, beautiful black-haired boys who were playing in the court-yard, ran to inform him that an Englishman was waiting to speak with him, as it is probable that I was the first heretic who ever ventured into his habitation. I found him in a vaulted room, seated on a lofty chair, with two sinister-looking secretaries, also in sacerdotal habits, employed in writing at a table before him.