638 Women are the Devil! [JuNE, 





but I now prefer more solid pleasures, (and so I soon found to my cost,) 

 for, believe me, women are the very devil : and now, if you please, the ser- 

 geant shall conduct you to your apartment." And the sergeant I followed, 

 little dreaming of the nature of my apartment. We traversed the quad- 

 rangle of the fortress, and stopped before a low door beneath a case- 

 mated battery, on opening which my ears were assailed by the clangour 

 of chains and a volley of the most horrid imprecations. So noxious was 

 the stench, that a momentary faintness came over me. " In the name of 

 all that's just," said I to the sergeant, " this surely cannot be the apart- 

 ment the commandant alluded to." " Senor," replied the soldier, " nav hor 

 remedio, this is the carcel, and there is no other/' and he spoke the truth, 

 for in this empire, that, according to the boast of the old commandant was 

 advancing towards perfectibility, I doubt if the name of our Philanthropic 

 Howard was ever heard. The accused and the condemned, the murderer 

 and the political offender, the innocent and the guilty, were all confined 

 in the same loathsome dungeon. " Are you certain, comrade," said I, 

 drawing out my purse and holding it up as a last appeal, " that there is 

 no other apartment ?" The soldier fixed his eye on the purse with an in- 

 tensity of gaze, as if it possessed the faculty fabulously ascribed by his 

 countrymen to an instrument in possession of the English mining agents, 

 for discovering, by its optical power, the auriferous ore in the bowels of 

 the earth. " Another apartment there is," he replied, " cavallero, but it 

 will cost you dear." " Cost what it may," I eagerly rejoined, " let me 

 have it j" for had I possessed the diamond district of Serra Frio, I would 

 freely have given it to have escaped incarceration in a place to which the 

 black hole of Calcutta was a paradise. The sergeant retired to speak to 

 the commandant, and shortly returned, telling me, that for fifty dollars a 

 day I might be accommodated with an apartment overlooking the bay. I 

 closed with the bargain, was put in possession of my new quarters, and 

 left to my own reflections. These were not the most agreeable ; the 

 shadow of a smile that I thought I detected playing on the lip of Dolorcitta, 

 now assumed in my mind the semblance of reality, and produced a com- 

 plete revolution in my feelings towards her. 



On the following morning the consul procured my liberation, and I ex- 

 changed my expensive quarters in the citadel for a French posada in the 

 city. After making an excellent dinner, to which I had long been a 

 stranger, as I swung in my hammock in the verandah of the posada, gaz- 

 ing on the glorious scenery of the bay, my thoughts insensibly reverted to 

 Dolorcitta. I was smoking too, and a segar leads to reflection ; though 

 I never smoke now, the Guards have made it so vulgar. The angry feel- 

 ings of the preceding day vanished from my mind like mists before the 

 sun. The bell of a neighbouring church tolled the Ave Maria, it was the 

 hour of love ; I felt its melting influence. Springing from the hammock 

 and putting on my coat, " I will go this instant," said I to myself, " and 

 call on her." Now should the reader think that I am tediously minute in 

 mentioning that I put on my coat, he will be egregiously in the wrong, as 

 readers often are. In the first place, it marks the climate. In the second, 

 it illustrates a feature of national manners. " Tout est relatif" says a 

 distinguished French author, " les choses sont importantes scion le pays " 

 and so they are. The dignity of a pacha is measured by the number of 

 horse tails that are borne floating on the breeze before him. In China, a 

 peacock's feather and a cup of bear's milk from the Emperor's table is 



