Thrice happy, then, the man blessed with a provident servant who has foraged on the road, and comes prepared with cates on which no Castilian Canidia has breathed; while they are stewing he may, if he be a poet, rival those sonnets made in Don Quixote on Sancho’s ass, saddle-bags, and sapient attention to their provend, “_su cuerda providencia_.” The odour and good tidings of the arrival of unusual delicacies soon spread far and wide in the village, and generally attract the _Cura_, who loves to hear something new, and does not dislike savoury food: the quality of a Spaniard’s temperance, like that of his mercy, is strained; his poverty and not his will consents to more and other fastings than to those enjoined by the church; hunger, the sauce of Saint Bernard, is one of the few wants which is not experienced in a Spanish venta. Our practice in one was to invite the curate, by begging him to bless the pot-luck, to which he did ample justice, and more than repaid for its visible diminution by good fellowship, local information, and the credit reflected on the stranger in the eyes of the natives, by beholding him thus patronised by their pastor and master. It is not to be denied in the case of a stew of partridges, that deep sighs and exclamations _que rico!_ “how rich!” escape the envious lips of his hungry flock when they behold and whiff the odoriferous dish as it smokes past them like a railway locomotive. Nor, it must be said, was all this hospitality on one side; it has more than once befallen us in the rude _ventas_ of the Salamanca district, that the silver-haired _cura_, whose living barely furnished the means whereby to live, on hearing the simple fact that an Englishman was arrived, has come down to offer his house and fare. Such, or indeed any Spaniard’s invitation is not to be accepted by those who value liberty of action or time; seat rather the good man at the head of the _venta_ board, and regale him with your best cigar, he will tell you of _El gran Lor_--the great Lord--the Cid of England; he will recount the Duke’s victories, and dwell on the good faith, mercy, and justice of our brave soldiers, as he will execrate the cruelty, rapacity, and perfidy of those who fled before their gleaming bayonets.