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     A los que amor no saben
       Ofreces las dulzuras
     Y a mi las amarguras
       Que s’e lo quo es amar.

     Las gracias al me certe
       Eran cuadro de flores
     Te cantaban amores
       Por hacerte callar.

Oh! how much sap there is in this Spanish nation!  What a pity that they will not make it yield fruit!

In 1807, the tribunal of the Inquisition existed still at Valencia, and at times performed its functions.  The reverend fathers, it is true, did not burn people, but they pronounced sentences in which the ridiculous contended with the odious.  During my residence in this town, the holy office had to busy itself about a pretended sorceress; it doomed her to go through all quarters of the town astride on an ass, her face turned towards the tail, and naked down to the waist.  Merely to observe the commonest rules of decency, the poor woman had been plastered with a sticky substance, partly honey, they told me, to which adhered an enormous quantity of little feathers, so that to say the truth, the victim resembled a fowl with a human head.  The procession, whether attended by a crowd I leave it to be imagined, stationed itself for some time in the cathedral square, where I lived.  I was told that the sorceress was struck on the back a certain number of blows with a shovel; but I do not venture to affirm this, for I was absent at the moment when this hideous procession passed before my windows.

We thus see, however, what sort of spectacles were given to the people in the commencement of the nineteenth century, in one of the principal towns of Spain, the seat of a celebrated university, and the native country of numerous citizens distinguished by their knowledge, their courage, and their virtues.  Let not the friends of humanity and of civilization disunite; let them form, on the contrary, an indissoluble union, for superstition is always on the watch, and waits for the moment again to seize its prey.

I have mentioned in the course of my narrative that two Carthusians often left their convent in the Desierto de las Palmas, and came, though prohibited, to see me at my station, situated about two hundred metres higher.  A few particulars will give an idea of what certain monks were, in the Peninsula, in 1807.

One of them, Father Trivulce, was old; the other was very young.  The former, of French origin, had played a part at Marseilles, in the counter-revolutionary events of which this town was the theatre, at the commencement of our first revolution.  His part had been a very active one; one might see the proof of this in the scars of sabre cuts which furrowed his breast.  It was he who was the first to come.  When he saw his young comrade march up, he hid himself; but as soon as the latter had fully entered into conversation with me, Father Trivulce showed himself all at once.  His appearance had the effect of Medusa’s head.  “Reassure yourself,” said he to his young compeer; “only let us not denounce each other, for our prior is not a man to pardon us for having come here and infringed our vow of silence, and we should both receive a punishment, the recollection of which would long remain.”  The treaty was at once concluded, and from that day forward the two Carthusians came very often to converse with me.