Our guide had taken care, the evening before, to send forward a mule, which was to wait for us halfway along the road, in order to take the place of the one we set out with; for it is doubtful whether, without this precaution, we should have been able to perform the journey from Toledo to Madrid in a single day, owing to the excessive heat we were exposed to along the dusty road, which affords you nowhere the slightest shade, but runs through tracts of open and interminable corn-fields. We reached Illescas at about one o'clock, with no other incident to talk of than that of being half-baked, if not quite so. We were impatient to get away from a region which possessed nothing new for us, unless passing through it in a contrary direction can be said to add any novelty to the scene. When we had alighted, my companion preferred to go to sleep; while I, who was already pretty well accustomed to Spanish cookery, began contesting the possession of my dinner with innumerable swarms of flies. The landlady's daughter--a pretty little girl of twelve or thirteen, with Arabian eyes--stood beside me, with a fan in one hand and a little broom in the other, trying to keep off the importunate insects, which returned to the charge more furiously and more noisily than ever as soon as she flagged in the use of either fan or broom. With this assistance I succeeded, however, in getting into my mouth a few pieces somewhat free from flies; and when my hunger was a little appeased I opened a conversation with my pretty fly-flapper, which conversation was, however, kept within very limited bounds by my ignorance of the Spanish language. Yet, with the aid of my diamond dictionary, I succeeded in keeping up the conversation tolerably well for a foreigner. She told me that she could write and read all sorts of print, including even Latin; and that, moreover, she played the _pandero_ pretty well: I immediately requested her to give me a sample of her last-named talent, which she did with a very good grace, though much to the discomfort of my friend, whom the rattling of the brass rings and the hollow sound produced by the little musician's thumb on the ass's skin at length awoke. The fresh mule was now harnessed, as it was necessary to continue our journey. In a heat of thirty degrees, it requires great moral courage to leave a _posada_ where we see before us several rows of jars, pots, and _alcarrazas_, covered with beads of moisture. Spain is the only place where a draught of water ever appeared to me real voluptuousness: it is true that the water there is pure, limpid, and of an exquisite taste. The interdiction of wine to Mahometans is a law more easily obeyed than any other in such climates.