Very novel penances are sometimes prescribed by the priests by way of atonement for individual iniquities. The Padre Cartine was particularly ingenious and happy in imposing them. Lazy fellows and _bon vivants_, to whom he thought exercise and fasting would prove beneficial, he sent bare-footed and alone to El Viejo, or some place at a distance, under the restriction to speak to no human being on the way, nor to eat, nor yet to sleep, until their return. A heavy stone, rough and angular, had sometimes to be carried on the naked shoulders of the penitent, or a cross of heavy wood, according to the more or less heinous nature of the poor devil’s offences. Carpenters, masons, and all other valuable sinners, whose labor could be turned to good account, the Padre set to work in repairing or improving his church and the buildings attached to it, and never failed to put the good workmen “well in for it.” Occasionally he got hold of a stupid fellow who failed to perform a profitable day’s labor. In such cases the Padre had a whip, made of the skin of the _dante_, or tapir, which he scrupled not to apply to the delinquent’s back, for the benefit of his soul, and the acceleration of the particular job in hand. And it is reported that these applications are sometimes accompanied with terms more forcible than complimentary; but I don’t vouch for the truth of that. For one or two months during my stay in Leon, the Padre had under his surveillance a priest, suspended for licentious conduct, with whom he was extremely rigorous. I was an accidental witness of his severity on one occasion, when the Host was passing. The suspended Padre, in common with all the people, came to the door, but instead of bending like the rest on the hard threshold, he knelt comfortably in a soft-bottomed chair. The indignant monk saw the dodge, and rising hastily, with a vigorous blow of his foot knocked the chair from underneath the delinquent, who came down with a force which must have jarred every bone in his sinful body. The course of fasting and prayer through which that priest was “put” by the Padre Cartine, if report speaks true,—midnight vigils, and noonday masses,—would have reformed Silenus, and made a saint of Bacchus.