Page:Life in Mexico vol 1.djvu/179

Rh this one, it is only because we live on the site where the event took place. . ..

We went a few days ago to see some effects which are for sale, belonging to a Cura who died lately, having heard that he has left some good paintings amongst them. We went in the evening, and found no one but the agent, an individual in the Daniel Lambert style; an old woman or two, and the padre Leon, a Jesuit, Capellan of the Capuchin nuns, and whose face besides being handsome, looks the very personification of all that is good, and mild, and holy. What a fine study for a painter his head would be! The old priest who died, and who had brought over various valuables from Spain, had a sister who was a leper, and who died in the hospital of San Lazaro. This dreadful scourge is by no means wholly unknown here; and though it is ordained that all who are afflicted by it shall be shut up in this hospital, I have met two persons, and one of these in society, who have the disease.

For this house, which is very large, the executors ask a preposterous rent. The goods of the defunct, which were for sale, were ranged on long tables in a very large apartment. There were virgins and saints, surplices, candlesticks and snuffer-trays; boxes of all sorts and sizes; an ill-set parure of emeralds and diamonds; several good paintings, especially one of the Annunciation. There was the death of San José, various saints, &.c., all religious subjects, as may be supposed. Two Cn bought; one I greatly coveted. There were also two large pieces of embroidered velvet, on which