Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/50

 On one side of the gateway is the fonda or eating part of the establishment, where two or three women were employed cooking sundry strange looking messes. We signified our hunger, and were soon called to table. Several officers of the garrison, as well as the stage-load coming from Mexico, were there before us. The cooking had been done with charcoal, over furnaces, and the color of the cooks, their clothes, the food, and the hearth was identical; a warning, as in France, never to enter the kitchen before meals. The meats had been good, but were perfectly bedevilled by the culinary imps. Garlic, onions, grease, chilé, and God knows what of other nasty compounds, had flavored the food like nothing else in the world but Perote cookery. We tasted, however, of every dish, and that taste answered to allay appetite if not to assuage hunger; especially as the table-cloth had served many a wayfarer since its last washing, (if it had ever been washed,) and had, besides, doubtless been used for duster, (if they ever dust.) The waiter, too, was a boy, in sooty rags, who hardly knew the meaning of a plate, and had never heard of other forks but his fingers.

Disgusted, as you may well suppose we were with this supper, I did not remain long at table. We were a set of baulked, hungry men, and withal, tired and peevish. I put my face for a moment outside of the gate, to take a walk, as the night was beautiful; but S—— pulled me back again, with a hint at the notorious reputation of Perote. It was not eight o'clock, but the town was already still as death. Its population had slunk home to their cheerless dwellings, and the streets were as deserted as those of Pompeii, save where a ragged rascal now and then skulked along in the shadow of the houses, buried up in his broad-brimmed sombrero and dirty blanket.

We therefore at once retired to our cells; I threw myself on the bed wrapped in my cloak, in dread of a vigorous attack from the fleas, and slept without moving until the driver called us at midnight to start for Puebla. Being already dressed, I required no time for my toilet, and I doubt much if hair-brushes, orris tooth-powder, or the sweet savors of the Rue Vivienne, were ever thought of by a parting guest at Perote!

In half an hour we were once more in the coach galloping out of the town, followed by three dragoons furnished by the officer we had met at supper, who seemed to entertain as poor an opinion as we did of this citadel of vagabondism.

Although the sky had been clear and the stars were shining brightly when we retired to bed, a mist was now hanging in low clouds over the plain. The road was, however, smooth and level, and we scampered along nimbly, fear adding stings to our coachman's lash, inasmuch as he was the driver of a diligence that had been robbed last spring, and had received a ball between his shoulders, from the effects of which he had just sufficiently recovered to drive on his first trip since the conflict. We galloped during the whole night, stopping only for a moment to change horses; nor did we meet a living thing except a pack of jackals, that