convent with painful interest.  I remarked late at night a solitary light twinkling from a remote lattice of one of its towers.  ‘There,’ said I, ’the unhappy nun sits weeping in her cell, while perhaps her lover paces the street below in unavailing anguish.’

“—­The officious Mateo interrupted my meditations and destroyed in an instant the cobweb tissue of my fancy.  With his usual zeal he had gathered facts concerning the scene, which put my fictions all to flight.  The heroine of my romance was neither young nor handsome; she had no lover; she had entered the convent of her own free will, as a respectable asylum, and was one of the most cheerful residents within its walls.

“It was some little while before I could forgive the wrong done me by the nun in being thus happy in her cell, in contradiction to all the rules of romance; I diverted my spleen, however, by watching, for a day or two, the pretty coquetries of a dark-eyed brunette, who, from the covert of a balcony shrouded with flowering shrubs and a silken awning, was carrying on a mysterious correspondence with a handsome, dark, well-whiskered cavalier, who lurked frequently in the street beneath her window.  Sometimes I saw him at an early hour, stealing forth wrapped to the eyes in a mantle.  Sometimes he loitered at a corner, in various disguises, apparently waiting for a private signal to slip into the house.  Then there was the tinkling of a guitar at night, and a lantern shifted from place to place in the balcony.  I imagined another intrigue like that of Almaviva, but was again disconcerted in all my suppositions.  The supposed lover turned out to be the husband of the lady, and a noted contrabandista; and all his mysterious signs and movements had doubtless some smuggling scheme in view.

     “—­I occasionally amused myself with noting from this balcony the
     gradual changes of the scenes below, according to the different
     stages of the day.

“Scarce has the gray dawn streaked the sky, and the earliest cock crowed from the cottages of the hill-side, when the suburbs give sign of reviving animation; for the fresh hours of dawning are precious in the summer season in a sultry climate.  All are anxious to get the start of the sun, in the business of the day.  The muleteer drives forth his loaded train for the journey; the traveler slings his carbine behind his saddle, and mounts his steed at the gate of the hostel; the brown peasant from the country urges forward his loitering beasts, laden with panniers of sunny fruit and fresh dewy vegetables, for already the thrifty housewives are hastening to the market.

“The sun is up and sparkles along the valley, tipping the transparent foliage of the groves.  The matin bells resound melodiously through the pure bright air, announcing the hour of devotion.  The muleteer halts his burdened animals before the chapel, thrusts his staff