224 



PERU. 



gest plans ; and all to talk, smoke their segars, 

 and finally do nothing. Many whose politics 

 had obliged them to keep out of sight for a long 

 time, now came forward from their places of con- 

 cealment ; and many whose authority had a few 

 days before carried all before it, now looked sad- 

 ly crest-fallen. Some expressed the greatest 

 alarm ; some sorrow ; others were exulting and 

 congratulating one another on the consummation 

 of their political hopes ; and some bustled about 

 amongst the crowd, merely to say how very much 

 they were in doubt what ought to be done. My 

 old acquaintance, the ex-inquisitor, whom I had 

 met in the same house in February last, was 

 there amongst the rest, but was treated with a 

 contempt that very clearly proved his occupation 

 to be gone. On the other hand, I recognized a 

 strange little man, folded up in an old dingy 

 Spanish cloak, with a broad-brimmed yellow hat, 

 hooked loosely on one corner of his small square 

 head, and shadowing a face plastered all over 

 with snuff, which, in the vehemence of his agi- 

 tation, he flung at his nose in handfuls ; but 

 through this forbidding exterior it was easy to 



