AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF FKANCIS AEAGO. 161 



Las gracias al me certe 



Eran cnadro do flores 

 Te cantabaii amorese 



For hacerte callar. 



Oil! bow much sap there is in this Spanish nation! What a pity 

 that they will not make it yield fruit ? 



In 1807, the tribunal of the Inquisition existed still at Valencia, and 

 at times performed its functions. The reverend fathers, it is true, did 

 not burn people, but they pronounced sentences in which the ridiculous 

 contended with the odious. Dariug my residence in this town, the 

 holy office had to busy itself about a i)retended sorceress; it doomed 

 her to go through all quarters of the town astride on an ass, her face 

 turned toward the tail, and naked down to the M'aist. Merely to ob- 

 serve the commonest rules of decency, tbe poor woman had been plas- 

 tered with a sticky substance, partly honey, they told mo, to which 

 adhered an enormous quantity of little feathers, so that, to saj^ the 

 truth, the victim resembled a fowl with a human head. Tiie proces- 

 sion, whether attended b}- a crowd I leav^e it to be imagined, sta- 

 tioned itself for some time in the cathedral square, where I liv^ed. I was 

 told that the sorceress was struck on the back a certain number of blows 

 with a shovel ; but I do not venture to affirm this, for I was absent at 

 the moment when this hideous procession passed before my windows. 



We thus see, however, vviiat sort of spectacles were given to the 

 people in the commencement of the nineteenth century, in one of the 

 ]uincipal towns of Spain, the seat of a celebrated university, and the 

 native country of numerous citizens distinguished by their knovvdedge, 

 their courage, and their virtues. Let not the friends of humanity and 

 of civilization disunite; let them form, on the contrary, an indissoluble 

 union, for superstition is always on the watch, and waits for the 

 moment again to seize its prey. 



I have mentioned in the course of .my narrative that two Carthusians 

 often left their convent in the Bcsierto cle las Falinas, and came though 

 prohibited, to see me at my station, situated about two hundred meters 

 higher. A few particulars will give an idea of what certain monks 

 were, in the Peninsula, in 1807. 



One of them. Father Trivulce, was old ; the other was very young. 

 The former, of French origin, hhd played a part at Marseilles, in the 

 counter-revolutionary events of which this town was the tLeater, at the 

 commencement of our first revolution. His part had been a very active 

 one; one might see the i^roof of this in the scars of saber cuts which 

 furrowed his breast. It was he who was the first to come. When ho 

 saw his young comrade march up, he hid himself; but as soon as the 

 latter had fully entered into conversation with me. Father Trivulce 

 showed himself all at once. His appearance had the effect of Medusa's 

 head. " Reassure yourself," said he to his young compeer ; " only let 

 us not denounce each other, for our prior is not a man to pardon us for 

 lis 



