The inn at which we were to pass the night was a large building consisting but of one immense room, with a fireplace at each end, a roof of timberwork, shiny and black with smoke, racks on each side for horses, mules, and donkeys; and having, for the accommodation of travellers, a few small lateral chambers, containing each a bed formed of three planks placed on two trestles, and covered with those pellicles of canvass, in which floated a few lumps of wool, and which hotel-keepers, with the usual effrontery and _sang froid_ which characterize them, call mattresses; but this, however, did not hinder us from snoring like Epimenides and the Seven Sleepers all together. We set off very early in the morning to avoid the heat, and we again saw the beautiful rose-bays, as resplendent as glory and as blooming as love, which had enchanted us the evening before. The Guadalquiver, with its troubled and yellowish waters, soon appeared to bar our passage; we crossed it in a ferry-boat, and took the road to Jaen. To our left was pointed out to us the tower of Torrequebradilla, on which a sunbeam was playing, and we soon perceived the strange outline of the city of Jaen, the capital of the province of that name. An enormous mountain, of the colour of ochre, as tawny as a lion's skin, variegated with stripes of red and brown, and enveloped in clouds of light, rises abruptly in the middle of the city; massive towers, and long, zigzag lines of fortification streak its barren sides and give them a fantastic and picturesque appearance. The Cathedral, an immense mass of architecture, which seems, from a distance, to be larger than the town itself, rears its head haughtily, like an artificial mountain by the side of the natural one. This cathedral, which is of the Renaissance style of architecture, and which boasts of possessing the true handkerchief in which Saint Veronica took the impression of our Saviour's face, was built by the duke of Medina Coeli. It is certainly a handsome building, but we had imagined it, at a distance, to be both more antique and more curious. On our way from the _Parador_ to the cathedral, I took care to inspect the play-bills, and found that, the evening before, _Mérope_ had been played, and that that evening would be given "El Campanero de San Pablo," _por el illustrissimo señor don Jose Bouchardy_; or, in other words, "Le Sonneur de Saint Paul," by my friend Bouchardy. To have your pieces played at Jaen, a barbarous town, where the inhabitants never go out without a poniard in their belt and a carabine on their shoulder, is certainly very flattering, and very few of our contemporary geniuses are able to boast of a like success. If we formerly borrowed a few _chefs-d'œuvre_ of the Spanish stage, we fully repay, at present, in vaudevilles and in melodramas, the value of all we have taken.