Never did nightmare, placing its knee on the chest of a delirious patient, produce a more frightful monster. Quasimodo is a very Phœbus by the side of it. A square forehead, two sunken eyes, glaring with a savage fire, a nose so flat that its place was distinguished only by the nostrils, with the lower jaw advancing full two inches beyond the upper one--such, in a few words, is the portrait of this scarecrow, the profile of which formed a concave line, like those crescents on which the face of the moon is represented in the almanack of Liege. The calling of this wretch consisted in being without a nose, and in imitating dogs, a calling which he exercised wonderfully well, for he was more noseless than death himself, and made alone more uproar than all the inmates put together of the Barrière du Combat at feeding-time. Puerto Lapiche consists of a few tumbling-down huts, huddled together on the declivity of a hill which is itself full of cracks and chasms, and become so dry and rotten by the heat that it is continually giving way and being torn asunder by the most curiously-shaped rents. It represents aridity and desolation in its highest degree. Everything is of the colour of cork and pumice-stone. The fire of heaven seems to have passed over it; and the whole scene is smothered by grey dust, as fine as powdered sandstone. This wretchedness is so much the more heartrending as the lustre of an implacable sky makes the whole poverty of the place most prominently apparent. The cloudy melancholy of the north is nothing in comparison with the luminous sadness of warm countries. On beholding such wretched hovels, you feel yourself full of pity for the robbers who are obliged to live by marauding in a country where you might make a round of ten leagues and not find wherewithal to cook an egg. The resources offered by the diligences and galleys are really insufficient, and the poor brigands who vegetate in La Mancha are often obliged to be contented with a supper composed of a handful of those sweet acorns which were the delight of Sancho Panza. What is it possible to take from people who have neither money nor pockets, who live in houses of which the whole furniture is composed of four bare walls, and whose only utensils are a saucepan and an earthenware pitcher? To pillage such villages appears to me one of the most lugubrious fancies which can well enter the head of a robber out of work. A little beyond Puerto Lapiche you enter La Mancha, where we perceived to our right two or three windmills, which lay claim to having victoriously sustained the shock of Don Quixote's lance, and which, for the moment, were listlessly turning their fans with the aid of an asthmatic breeze. The _venta_ at which we stopped to imbibe two or three jars of fresh water, also boasts of having entertained the immortal hero of Cervantes.