Antes de entrar afirma con tu vida,
     S. Maria fue sin pecado concebida:

Which may be translated into verse of equal quality,

     Confess on thy life before coming in,
     That blessed Saint Mary was conceived without sin.

Nothing particular happened on our journey, except that a well-dressed Mexican turned up at the landing-place, wanting a passage, and as we had taken a canoe for ourselves, we offered to let him come with us.  He was a well-bred young man, speaking one or two languages besides his own; and he presently informed us that he was going on a visit to a rich old lady at Tezcuco, whose name was Dona Maria Lopez, or something of the kind.  When we drove away from the other end of the lake, towards Tezcuco, we took him as far as the road leading to the old lady’s house; when he rather astonished us by hinting that he should like to go on with us to the Casa Grande, and could walk back.  At the same time, it struck us that the youth, though so well dressed, had no luggage; and we began to understand the queer expression of the coachman’s face when he saw him get into the carriage with us.  So we stopped at the corner of the road, and the young gentleman had to get out.

At the Casa Grande, our friends laughed at us immensely when we told them of the incident, and offered us twenty to one that he would come to ask for money within twenty-four hours.  He came the same evening, and brought a wonderful story about his passport not being en regle, and that unless we could lend him ten dollars to bribe the police, he should be in a dreadful scrape.  We referred him to the master of the house, who said something to him which caused him to depart precipitately, and we never saw him again; but we heard afterwards that he had been to the other foreigners in the neighbourhood with various histories.  We made more enquiries about him in the town, and it appeared that his expedition to Tezcuco was improvised when he saw us going down to the boat, and of course the visit to the rich old lady was purely imaginary.  Now this youth was not more than eighteen, and looked and spoke like a gentleman.  They say that the class he belonged to is to be counted rather by thousands than by hundreds in Mexico.  They are the children of white Creoles, or nearly white mestizos; they get a superficial education and the art of dressing, and with this slender capital go out into the world to live by their wits, until they get a government appointment or set up as political adventurers, and so have a chance of helping themselves out of the public purse, which is naturally easier and more profitable than mere sponging upon individuals.  One gets to understand the course of Mexican affairs much better by knowing what sort of raw material the politicians are recruited from.