He was not disconcerted, however, and said his relation could travel, as I myself was doing, and dispose of them to the peasants with profit to himself.  I confess I was inclined at first to accept his offer, but at length declined it, as I did not wish to expose a poor man to the risk of losing money, goods, and perhaps liberty and life.  I was likewise averse to the books being offered to the peasantry at an advanced price, being aware that they could not afford it, and the books, by such an attempt, would lose a considerable part of that influence which they then enjoyed; for their cheapness struck the minds of the people, and they considered it almost as much in the light of a miracle as the Jews the manna which dropped from heaven at the time they were famishing, or the spring which suddenly gushed from the flinty rocks to assuage their thirst in the wilderness.

At this time a peasant was continually passing and repassing between Villa Seca and Madrid, bringing us cargoes of Testaments on a burrico.  We continued our labours until the greater part of the villages of the Sagra were well supplied with books, more especially those of Vargas, Coveja, Mocejon, Villaluenga, Villa Seca, and Yungler.  Hearing at last that our proceedings were known at Toledo, and were causing considerable alarm, we returned to Madrid.

CHAPTER XLIV

Aranjuez—­A Warning—­A Night Adventure—­A Fresh Expedition—­ Segovia—­Abades—­Factions Curas—­Lopez in Prison—­Rescue of Lopez.

The success which had attended our efforts in the Sagra of Toledo speedily urged me on to a new enterprise.  I now determined to direct my course to La Mancha, and to distribute the word amongst the villages of that province.  Lopez, who had already performed such important services in the Sagra, had accompanied us to Madrid, and was eager to take part in this new expedition.  We determined in the first place to proceed to Aranjuez, where we hoped to obtain some information which might prove of utility in the further regulation of our movements; Aranjuez being but a slight distance from the frontier of La Mancha and the high road into that province passing directly through it.  We accordingly sallied forth from Madrid, selling from twenty to forty Testaments in every village which lay in our way, until we arrived at Aranjuez, to which place we had forwarded a large supply of books.

A lovely spot is Aranjuez, though in desolation:  here the Tagus flows through a delicious valley, perhaps the most fertile in Spain; and here upsprang, in Spain’s better days, a little city, with a small but beautiful palace shaded by enormous trees, where royalty delighted to forget its cares.  Here Ferdinand the Seventh spent his latter days, surrounded by lovely senoras and Andalusian bull-fighters:  but as the German Schiller has it in one of his tragedies: 

“The happy days in fair Aranjuez,
Are past and gone.”