daughter of a politic wax-chandler, who had had the honour to supply the private oratory of his Grandeur the Archbishop of Mexico with tapers before the never-to-be-sufficiently-anathematised Stöffelbaum had cozened him out of his Grandeur's custom by supplying his Grandeur with candles twenty-five per cent under the regular price! Gavacho! hijo de verdugo! José would mutter between his teeth, when he thought of Stöffelbaum. He was always thinking of this Teutonic miscreant.

Jules Dubreuil-that was his full appellation—had put a climax to his insolence by formally demanding the hand of Pepita in marriage. Have you any money?' asked the justly-incensed parent, keeping his temper outwardly, but trembling with suppressed nervous excitement. 'Not a claquo,' replied the unabashed Jules. 'I have nothing but my fiddle, my engagement at the Yturbide (it is true, the manager does not pay our salaries very regularly, mais, monsieur, j'ai ma jeunesse), and my liver is unimpaired.'

This was touching José Jamon on two very sore points: he was growing old, and the less said about his viscera the better. Al Diablo!' he cried; you, your youth, and your liver! You have no money; you are a bisoñoso-a beggar. a beggar. Get out of my house! This time I reply to your insolent request with my mouth; the next time I answer shall be with my boot.'

The hardened Jules received this allocution with cheerful equanimity, and took his departure, humming the lively air of Mon ami Pierrot.' José Jamon found a very curious love-letter from him in his daughter's workbox (the old spy!) a few days afterwards. 'I shall send you no more billets, my charmer,' wrote the callous Moussou. Were I to slip them into the hood of your mantilla, as you suggest, when you are kneeling at vespers in the sagrario of the cathedral, some friend of your family might be on the watch, and my imprudence might lead to my being stabbed some moonless night by a gentleman waiting for me in a dark entry as I returned from the theatre. I do not wish to be stabbed by a gentleman in a dark entry. The constant heart that beats for thee, my Pepita, entertains a strong objection to being transfixed by a navaja. Nor shall I serenade thee under thy balcony, ma petite. That kind of thing is all very well for the opera; but I cannot racler on the guitar, and wouldst thou have me serenade thee on the fiddle? Besides, some friend of thy family might be in waiting to kick me, or to pour cold water over thy admirer. I do not like being kicked; there is an instinctive aversion in the human mind from being kicked, thus proving the immortality of the soul. Our aspirations are upwards; water is a colourless liquid, which becomes black when the human hands are immersed in it: I will keep it to wash my hands, and do not care about having it poured down the small of my back late at night. Keep up thy courage; I love thee, Pepita of mine.

I will devise means for subduing the tigerish ferocity of thy worthy but atrabilious papa, and thou shalt be mine. Jules Dubreuil, fils de veure, électeur éligible, swears it. Thou shalt be mine; and thou shalt see Paris the Incomparable; and I will lead the orchestra at the Ambigu Comique, and become famous and decorated. Thine

for ever.'

And so, serpent, thou advisedst this treacherous Moussou- -a coward as well as a traitor, for he did not even dare to follow thy advice to drop writings into thy riboso during the sacred office? Impious cockatrice!'

Yes, José Jamon called his daughter an impious cockatrice. It was strong language to use to a young lady; but what was the infuriated father to do? He might have had recourse to the lasso or the stirrup-leather, by means of which he had maintained his authority over her defunct mamma; but the girl plainly told him that if he struck her, she would forthwith go and drown herself in the Canal de la Vega. So José Jamon contented himself with the threat, that if she entertained any farther correspondence with Jules Dubreuil, she should be sent to the Convent of the Black Nuns of San Luis Potosi-a dreadfully grim sisterhood, who practised asceticism of the most excruciating nature, wearing girdles of tarred rope set with fishhooks round their waists, and stinging-nettles in their stockings. Finally, he consigned her to the custody of an old halfcaste Indian woman, who was to officiate as dueña, and was instructed to talk to her young charge about the saints. She talked to her instead about Jules Dubreuil, and fetched and carried messages between the Calle Santa Isidra and the Teatro Yturbide with great alacrity and blitheness. Depend upon it, the heathen god Mercury was an old woman.

Talking of Santa Isidra, there was a shrine of that saint- -a Mexican one, and who, in the days of the Spanish dominion, had been in very high repute at the corner of the street, and in the very wall of José Jamon's house. Both shrine and shop had drifted into a very shabby and tumble-down condition. There was a rusty grating before the niche which held the statue of the saint, and this had been useful in bygone days to protect from the mala gente, or evilly-disposed, the gold and jewels with which her person was adorned; but the trinkets had long since disappeared, the grating had been broken down, and its few remaining bars were as rusty and bent as the railings of Leicester-square, while some irreverent persons had even gone so far as to scrape off the paltry modicum of gold-leaf on the nimbus round the saint's head. Her spangled kirtle was gone, her embroidered farthingale was in rags, her nose was broken; no lamp was kindled before her. She was a disendowed and disestablished saint, and might have cried, paraphrasing the incensed goddess in Virgil,

'What nation now to Juno's power will pray,
Or off'rings on my slighted altars lay?'

Nobody would. Don Benito Juarez and the Puros had played old Harry the Eighth with the Mexican hagiology.

It was on the morning that José Jamon de la Ycarregua had, with the expletive of Caramba, expressed his opinion as to the ultimate destination of the United States of Mexico, that, as he was moodily withdrawing into his shop, he descried the abhorred Moussou,' Jules Dubreuil, coming at his usually quiet and jaunty pace up the Calle de las Santas Tripas, and towards the Isidra.

'Scoundrel!' growled José Jamon, clenching his fist and biting the end of a cigarito (I should have told you that he had been smoking all the time) clean off in his rage, Scoundrel! how dare he come near my domicile ?'

The impenitent Dubreuil not only ventured to approach the Jamonian residence, but had the inconceivable hardihood to cross the threshold, enter the shop, accost the politic and outraged wax-chandler, and slap him on the back. A fiddler dare to slap anybody on the back! He deserves to be beaten to death with fiddlestrings for his effrontery.

6

Miscreant!' gasped José, at once physically and morally out of breath through this assault, what do you want? How dare you pollute with your noisome presence this home of virtue—' 'And the best wax-candles,' the depraved Frenchman interrupted Don't be savage, old compadre of mine.

with a loud strident laugh.

My watchword is gente de paz.* You ask what I want. Well, I have two objects in visiting you. The first is, to beg your acceptance of this remarkably fine Figaro regalia, one of a box sent me by an old friend who is managing the Tacon Theatre at Havana ; the second is, to talk to you on a matter of business-financial business, mi compadre-the wax-chandlery business, which, I understand, has for a long time been going muy mal with you.'

José Jamon groaned. He could not controvert the Moussou' as to the decay of his trade. Nor was he proof against the offer of a Figaro regalia; so, merely making up his mind that, if the presumptuous fiddler dared to reopen the subject of his love for Pepita, he would seize him by the throat and strangle him, he accepted the cigar, and folding his arms, informed Dubreuil that he was ready to listen to him from a business point of view.

The conversation lasted a long, a very long time; and, curious to relate, when at its conclusion the violinist lit another cigar, the politic wax-chandler shook him warmly by the hand and wished him luck.

• Compadre means chum, crony, foster-brother, 'pardner' as English working people say. In the south of Old Spain always, and in Mexico frequently, when you knock or ring at a door the porter within cries, Quien esta aqui?' 'Who is there?' You answer, as a rule, 'Gente de paz'—' people of peace;' meaning that your errand is of a pacific nature.

6

'Luck to both of us!' Jules returned cheerfully. Fortune stops away for a very long time; but when she does come, let us cover her chair with bird-lime.' And away he went, humming the vivacious. air of J'ai du bon tabac dans ma tabatière.'

A fortnight afterwards the whole city of Mexico was thrown into a state of extreme perturbation and excitement by an occurrence to the truth of which a number of trustworthy persons could vouch. The excitement arose in this manner. An Indian pulque-seller related to his compadre-likewise a gentleman of Aztec lineage, who dispensed bananas and mangoes by retail in the Great Plaza-that, happening to pass at early dawn the shrine of Santa Isidra, at the corner of the calle of that name, he had distinctly seen the saint raise both her arms and extend her hands as in the act of bestowing a blessing. As the pulque-seller was somewhat disguised with his own liquor at the time he made this statement, but little attention was paid to what he said. He reiterated, however, when he was

sober that which he had said when under the influence of the fermented juice of the Maguey; and the story of the miracle at the corner of the Calle Santa Isidra began to spread like wildfire among the superstitious market-people of the Plaza and the leperos of the Portal. It was next reported, that a gang of convicts coming from the Presidio to their daily task of street-sweeping had seen the miracle, and, struck with sudden contrition, had fallen on their knees, with a prodigious jangling of fetters, and solemnly promised never to do so any more-I mean, in the way of robbing the stagecoach and cutting people's throats. The Indian population more greedily received the story, since Santa Isidra was an Indian saint, hailing from Mirimichiquiti, in the state of Oajaca. But there are many more people besides Indians and half-castes in Mexico who are superstitious. All the devout old ladies, all the love-sick maidens, all the non-cloistered nuns, flocked to the corner of the Calle Santa Isidra. Fortunately the saint approved herself a thorough patriot and hero, for, in open day, she bestowed a blessing upon a regiment of national guards lately enrolled by Don Benito Juarez. From that moment the civil and military authorities and the governmental empleados began to patronise her. The Calle Santa Isidra was blocked up for the greater part of the day by pious crowds. The saint occasioned what, in England, would be termed a revival. Pilgrimages were made to her shrine. The grating in front of her niche was repaired and richly gilt. A bran-new nimbus of pure gold, a new kirtle of damask embroidered with seed-pearls, and a farthingale of pink satin, were provided for her; and over her head were suspended four lamps, always kept alight, of massive silver from the Rosario adit of the Real del Monte. So great was the pressure on Santa Isidra, that a military post was established close by, and sentinels were mounted to keep guard over the popular saint. She needed

protection; for a splendid gold and jewelled bracelet was found thrust between the bars of her shrine one morning. It was an offering to the Beata of Mirimichiquiti, in the state of Oajaca.

Need I hint to those who are acquainted with the oddities of superstition that the cultus of a saint is of little avail without waxcandles, and plenty of them? Long sixes, short sixes, long fours, short fours, dips, and tapers were burnt all day and all night before the shrine. It was bruited about that the invocation of Santa Isidra was an infallible remedy for disease of the kidneys-para el mal de riñones and all the valetudinarians in Mexico had little figures of Santa Isidra modelled in wax, and dressed them up in satin and spangles, and fitted up little toy chapels for them at their own houses, and burnt wax-candles before the images incessantly.

Where did they buy their candles? whence did the modellers procure their wax? Where but from the old-established shop of José Jamon de la Ycarregua, the most politic wax - chandler in Mexico!

He drove a roaring trade again, and made plenty of money. Just before the allied forces landed at Vera Cruz, his daughter Pepita was married in the church of San Francisco to M. Jules Dubreuil, artist - musician. The allies squabbled among themselves. The French took the whole weight of the expedition on their shoulders; Puebla was besieged and stormed; Don Benito Juarez ran away to Matamoras; the unhappy Maximilian arrived, established his ephemeral empire, was defeated, captured, and murdered; Don Benito Juarez came back again in triumph; but José Jamon de la Ycarregua went on selling wax-candles and making money under the immediate patronage of Santa Isidra, sometime of Mirimichiquiti, in the state of Oajaca. He may be selling candles and pocketing gold ounces still, for superstition is stronger than bankruptcy or war or anarchy. It is as strong now in many parts of civilised England as it was when the Canterbury pilgrims set out from the Tabard at Southwark to worship at the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket.

Jules Dubreuil and his pretty bride have not got as far as the Ambigu Comique yet. The impudent Frenchman, when I last heard of him, was making a great deal of money in travelling about South America with a marionette theatre. The mechanical excellence of his puppets is said to be really astonishing; and one of his female marionettes raises her arms and extends her hands in an astonishingly life-like manner. You might think that she was bestowing a benediction on the audience.