We will not fatigue our readers with a description of our monotonous route through a stony, flat, and dusty country, only enlivened, at long intervals, with a few olive-trees, whose foliage is diseased and of a bluish green; where nothing is seen but tawny, haggard, mummified peasants, with scorched, rusty hats, short breeches, and coarse gaiters of darkish cloth, carrying a tattered jacket on their shoulders, and driving before them a mangy ass whose coat is white with age, whose ears are enervated, and whose back is pitiful to behold; and where you see at the entrance of the villages nothing but half-naked children, as dark as mulattoes, and who view you with wild and astonished looks as you pass by. Dying of hunger, we arrived at Manzanares in the middle of the night. The courier who preceded us, profiting by his right as first comer and his acquaintance with the people of the hotel, had exhausted all the provisions, which consisted, it is true, but of three or four eggs and a piece of ham. We uttered the most piercing and heart-rending cries, and declared that we would set fire to the house and roast the landlady herself, if there were no other dish forthcoming. This display of energy procured us, at about two in the morning, some supper, to prepare which they had been obliged to wake up half the town. We had a quarter of kid, eggs with tomato-sauce, ham and goat's-milk cheese, with some pretty good white table-wine. We all supped together in the yard by the light of three or four brass lamps, very much like the funereal lamps of antiquity. The flame of each lamp producing, through the caprices of the wind, fantastic shades and lights, gave us the appearance of so many lamiæ and ghouls tearing asunder pieces of disinterred children: and that the repast might have a perfect appearance of magic, a tall blind girl, guided by the noise, approached the table, and began singing couplets to a plaintive and monotonous air, like a vague sibylline incantation. On learning that we were French, she improvised, in honour of us, some eulogical stanzas, which we rewarded with a few reals. Before getting into our conveyance, we went to take a turn in the village; we were obliged to grope our way, it is true, but that was better than remaining in the yard of the inn. We reached the Market-place, not, however, without having stumbled over some one sleeping in the open air. In the summer, the people generally sleep in the street, some under their cloaks, and some beneath mule-cloths, while others have a sack filled with chopped straw (these are sybarites); and then again there are some who lie on the bare bosom of their mother Cybele, with a stone for a pillow. The peasants who had arrived in the night were asleep, pell-mell, in the midst of curious vegetables and wild productions, or between the legs of their mules and donkeys, where they were waiting for daylight, which was soon to appear.