Merced, in their white flannel gowns, black girdles, and shaven crowns, suddenly entered the hall. We the foreign part of the society, calculated on being pulled up by the clerigos, but deuce a bit; on the contrary, the young females clustered round them, laughing and joking, while the Senora Campana presented them with goblets of claret, in which they drank our healths, once and again, and before long they were gamboling about, all shaven and shorn, like a couple of three-year olds. Bang had a large share of their assiduity, and to see him waltzing with a fine active, and what I fancy to be a rarity, a clean looking priest, with his ever recurring “mucho, mucho,” was rather entertaining. The director of the postoffice, and a man who was called the “Corregidor de Tabaco,” literally the “corrector of tobacco,” dropped in about this time, and one or two ladies, relatives of Mrs Campana, and Don Ricardo returning soon after, we had sweet meats and liqueurs, and coffee, and chocolate, and a game at monte, and maco, and were, in fact, very happy. But the happiest day, as well as the most miserable, must have an end, and the merry party dropped off, one after another, until we were left all alone with our host’s family. Madama soon after took her departure, wishing us a goodnight. She had no sooner gone, than Bang began to shoot out his horns a bit. “I say, Tom, ask the Don to let us have a drop of something hot, will you, a tumbler of hot brandy and water after the waltzing, eh? I don’t see the bedroom candles yet.” Nor would he, if we had sat there till doomsday. Campana seemed to have understood Bang, the brandy was immediately forthcoming, and we drew in to the table to enjoy ourselves, Bang waxing talkative. “Now what odd names,-- why, what a strange office it must be for his Majesty of Spain to employ at every port a corrector of tobacco; that his liege subjects may not be imposed on, I suppose--what capital cigars this same corrector must have, eh?” I suppose it is scarcely necessary to mention, that throughout all the Spanish American possessions, tobacco is a royal monopoly, and that the officer above alluded to is the functionary who has the management of it. Don Ricardo, hearing something about cigars, took the hint, and immediately produced a straw case from his pocket, and handed it to Bang. “Mucho, mucho,” quoth Bang; “capital, real Havannah.”