CHAPTER VIII 



VISIT TO AN OLIVE-FARM 



Sevilla, Pasqua de los Reyes, 1852. 

 On Saturday, January 4, 1852, I dressed myself in my 

 Andalusian costume, breakfasted, put up a couple of shirts 

 and other things, "tan claras y tan necessarias que no es 

 menester de describirlas " ; ^ besides w^hich, I stuck the six- 

 barrelled revolver in my faja (sash). 



I sat smoking my cigarillo over a chapter of Thomas a 

 Kempis. There came a knock at the door, and I cried, 

 '■^ Jdelantes'''' (forward), and he entered, — not the person I 

 vi^as w^aiting for, but my preceptor in the Spanish. It was 

 not his day, but he had missed the preceding, his hours 

 having been, as they often are, deranged by saints' days, 

 and he came now instead. Though I had no idea we should 

 have time to finish it, I began my lesson, to fill up the 

 moral vacuum which is always caused by expecting any- 

 body, and was busy translating "The Bible in Spain" into 

 my best extempore Spanish, when an ancient serving-man 

 of the Marques de Castilleja arrived, and informed me that 

 the marques was waiting in the Calle de la Muela, my 

 own street (the Calle de Velasquez) being too narrow for 



carriages. 



' " So evident and so necessary that it is not needful to describe 

 them," — Don Quixote. 



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