Gazpacho and Portrait 



We sat a little while in the olive-mill, on which the sun 

 was shining, while the thin melancholy mule, with matting 

 blinders, walked his dreary round. I here made another 

 sketch of the premises and machinery ; and Ramoncillo, the 

 gamekeeper, who had seen me draw his father, the capataz, 

 requested me to draw one of the millers, a very grim per- 

 sonage in a scarlet cap, something like those of Catalonia. 

 I told Ramoncillo himself to come upstairs to be drawn after 

 dinner, for he was too picturesque a vagabond to be left 

 out of my sketch-book. 



After dinner, he accordingly presented himself; and as 

 his mother had just summoned me to witness the confection 

 o( gazpacho^ I compromised the matter by painting in the 

 kitchen. As to the gazpacho^ it is made by breaking up 

 a tomato, a pimento, and a little bit of garlic, about as big 

 as half of a split kidney-bean. This is done in a strong 

 pot with a wooden pestle. About three table-spoonfuls of 

 oil, four or five of vinegar, and a dozen of water, mixed with 

 the vegetable pulp, form the sauce, in which a mass of 

 bread-crumbs are steeped, which being accomplished, the 

 compound is gazpacho. 



While this operation was going on, I set up Ramoncillo 

 in a corner of the kitchen, leaning on his musket, and drew 

 and painted him. The old lady would now call my attention 

 to some fresh ingredient in the mortar, and then come and 

 exclaim over the growing likeness. 



" They were his very eyes ! " (The portrait squinted it 

 possible more horribly than the original.) "And only see 

 how the breeches are exactly of the same colour." They 

 were of a sky-blue. But what most delighted her, and the 

 other relatives of the victim who gathered round his execu- 

 tion, was, that I did not omit even the little jet brooch 

 which he wore in his shirt-front. The representation of 



86 



