I was delighted to have the chance of seeing Toledo, and of making the journey in a comfortable carriage, so I accepted.  We started the next morning, and reached Toledo in the evening of the same day.  For Spain we were lodged comfortably enough, and the next day we went out under the charge of a cicerone, who took us to the Alcazar, the Louvre of Toledo, formerly the palace of the Moorish kings.  Afterwards we inspected the cathedral, which is well worthy of a visit, on account of the riches it contains.  I saw the great tabernacle used on Corpus Christi.  It is made of silver, and is so heavy that it requires thirty strong men to lift it.  The Archbishop of Toledo has three hundred thousand duros a year, and his clergy have four hundred thousand, amounting to two million francs in French money.  One of the canons, as he was shewing me the urns containing the relics, told me that one of them contained the thirty pieces of silver for which Judas betrayed our Lord.  I begged him to let me see them, to which he replied severely that the king himself would not have dared to express such indecent curiosity.

I hastened to apologise, begging him not to take offence at a stranger’s heedless questions; and this seemed to calm his anger.

The Spanish priests are a band of knaves, but one has to treat them with more respect than one would pay to honest men elsewhere.  The following day we were shewn the museum of natural history.  It was rather a dull exhibition; but, at all events, one could laugh at it without exciting the wrath of the monks and the terrors of the Inquisition.  We were shewn, amongst other wonders, a stuffed dragon, and the man who exhibited it said,—­

“This proves, gentlemen, that the dragon is not a fabulous animal;” but I thought there was more of art than nature about the beast.  He then shewed us a basilisk, but instead of slaying us with a glance it only made us laugh.  The greatest wonder of all, however, was nothing else than a Freemason’s apron, which, as the curator very sagely declared, proved the existence of such an order, whatever some might say.

The journey restored me to health, and when I returned to Aranjuez, I proceeded to pay my court to all the ministers.  The ambassador presented me to Marquis Grimaldi, with whom I had some conversations on the subject of the Swiss colony, which was going on badly.  I reiterated my opinion that the colony should be composed of Spaniards.

“Yes,” said he, “but Spain is thinly peopled everywhere, and your plan would amount to impoverishing one district to make another rich.”

“Not at all, for if you took ten persons who are dying of poverty in the Asturias, and placed them in the Sierra Morena, they would not die till they had begotten fifty children.  This fifty would beget two hundred and so on.”

My scheme was laid before a commission, and the marquis promised that I should be made governor of the colony if the plan was accepted.