1 83-2.] Women arc the Devil ! 637 



awoke the two black slaves, frightened the Senhoritta, and obliged me to 

 change my front. The breeze increased, and the calm, which I devoutly 

 wished might last for months, was succeeded by a fair wind that swept 

 our ship along at the rate of nine knots an hour ; and 'by noon of the fol- 

 lowing day, saw her safely anchored in the magnificent harbour of the Rio 

 de Janeiro. 



Dolores and myself gazed enraptured on this masterpiece of nature. 

 How happy we shall be here, what delightful rides we shall have ! we both 

 exclaimed ; but 



" Medio de fonte leporis surgit aliquid amari," 



and a cursed amari there did arise, in the shape of an officer, whose duty 

 it was to examine our passports. Dolorcitta's was found en regie, and 

 so ought mine to have been j but, after a most diligent search, it was 

 nowhere to be found. In the confusion of the preceding night it must 

 have been blown overboard, and so I told the officer. This worthy, put- 

 ting on his cocked hat with an official air, treated the matter " au serieuse." 

 Coming from a place held by the royalists, and without a passport, 

 looked, he said, suspicious ; and he should be under the necessity of con- 

 veying me to the citadel on the llha das Cobras, until his excellency the 

 Minister of Police should decide on the affair. 



Here was a pretty scrape. Dolores affected to be au desespoir, but still 

 I thought I detected a malicious smile playing round her pretty mouth 

 the thought was dispelled as soon as conceived by the eloquence of her 

 regrets, and the tenderness of her manner. " Adios querido que estoy 

 enfeliz," pressing me to come to her immediately on my liberation. I 

 jumped into the officer's boat, was rowed to the citadel, and handed over 

 to the commandant of the fortress, an old colonel of artillery, in personal 

 appearance the very prototype of the hero of La Mancha. This old 

 moustache was a complete character ; first of all he was a Sebastianista, 

 and so firmly did he believe, as I was afterwards told, that Don Sebastian 

 would shortly reappear to claim his kingdom and crown, that he had a 

 short time before given 500 dollars to receive 10,000 on the day of his 

 re-appearance. By his countrymen he was looked upon as a " Varron 

 eruditissimus," a very Talleyrand in politics and vain enough the old fel- 

 low was of his accomplishments, for conceiving the opportunity a favour- 

 able one of shewing off before a foreigner, he regaled me with an oration 

 of portentous length, every word of which was taken from Jeremy Ben- 

 tham, a high authority among- the South American liberals. The perora- 

 tion of his speech was absolutely sublime. "The human mind had 

 received an impulse, the spirit of the age would not retrogade, the eyes 

 of the world were fixed on Brazil, which was majestically advancing to the 

 goal of human perfectibility !" At this burst of eloquence, the pen drop- 

 ped from the hands of the orderly serjeant, who was writing under his 

 dictation at the moment I entered -, and the sentinel that was pacing up 

 and down the apartments, fairly halted though the spirit of the oration 

 was as perfectly unintelligible to them both, as Don Quixote's celebrated 

 dissertation on the Golden Age, to the goatherds of the Sierra Morena. 



Having, as he conceived, impressed me with a high opinion of his elo- 

 quence, he deigned to make a few observations on the circumstance that had 

 consigned me to his care. " Young gentleman," said he, twisting his mous- 

 tache with an air of great complacency, " when I was at your age, I was 

 remarkable for my gallantry, and great was my success with the fair sex, 



