A sort of chivalrous etiquette is observed, in virtue of which a female chorus is the first to form your escort from pillar to pillar. These dismissed, you are delivered over to the barefooted Murillos. There are two modes of escape. The rich man should go in with his two hands filled with coin, and distribute to all, even to many who will return for a second contribution before he has done. But if economical, you may attain the same end, and more permanently, by sacrificing four or five days to walking up and down the nave, without looking at anything, but simply undergoing the persecution of the mob. After the fourth visit you will be left in peace. These counsels I am competent to give you from dreadful experience; more dreadful from my having pursued a middle course. To one barefooted and rotten-scalped embryo brigand I only gave a two-_quarto_ piece (halfpenny) about equal in real consequence to twopence in England. If you have ever seen, in the era of mail coaches, the look of quiet surprise on the countenance of the well-fed charioteer, who, having, after the sixth or seventh stage, opened the door, and muttered from behind his _cache-nez_ the usual "coachman, gen'lemen" received a long-searched-for deprecatory sixpence from some careful knight with a false shirt-collar--you have noticed the self-same look, which was leisurely transferred by the urchin from the piece of copper in the open palm to my face, and back to the piece of copper. Instead, however, of restoring it to me, his indignation seemed to inspire him with a sudden resolution. He rushed to a kneeling Señorita a few paces distant, and interrupting her devotions by a pull at the side of her mantilla, he showed the coin in the open hand, while with the other he pointed to the culprit. If he meditated revenge, he should have made another choice, instead of deranging a garment, from the folds of which a real Andalucian mouth and pair of eyes, turning full on me, aimed a smile which, I need not inform you, was not dear at two _quartos_. Could such a smile have been natural, and the expression of mere curiosity, or was it intended for a death-wound, dealt for another's vengeance? and did the velvet language of those eyes signify a horrible "Pallas te hoc vulnere," in favour of the ragamuffin I had offended? At all events, the incident lost him a more munificent remuneration, by driving me from the spot, and expelling from my head, a project previously formed, of inviting him to my _fonda_ to be sketched.