332 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



questions put to him, touching a guitar, playing the 

 castanets, dancing and laughing, but without suffer- 

 ing himself to be seen. 



Afterward he took to throwing stones in garrets, 

 and eggs at the women and girls, and, says the pious 

 doctor Don Sanchez de Aguilar, " an aunt of mine, 

 vexed with him, once said to him, ' Go away from this 

 house, devil,' and gave him a blow in the face which 

 left the nose redder than cochineal." He became so 

 troublesome that the cura went to one of the houses 

 which he frequented to exorcise him, but in the mean 

 time El Demonio went to the cura's house and 

 played him a trick, after which he went to the house 

 where the cura was waiting, and when the latter went 

 away, told the trick he had been playing. After this 

 he began slandering people, and got the whole town 

 at swords' points to such an extent that it reached 

 the ears of the bishop at Merida, who forbade speak- 

 ing to him under pain of heavy spiritual punishments, 

 in consequence of which the vecinos abstained from 

 any communication with him ; at first the demonio 

 fell to weeping and complaining, then made more 

 noise than ever, and finally took to burning houses. 

 The vecinos sought Divine assistance, and the cura, 

 after a severe tussle, drove him out of the town. 



Thirty or forty years afterward, " when I," says 

 the doctor Don Sanchez de Aguilar, " was cura of 

 the said city, this demonio returned to infest some 

 of my annexed villages, and in particular one vil- 

 lage, Yalcoba, coming at midnight, or at one in the 



