Page:Narrative of an Official Visit to Guatemala.djvu/75

CH. V.]

, my valet, who was one of the handsomest Creolian lads I had seen, had a love affair in Mexico. He cried lustily when I told him, on setting off, that I must take him to England: now that he had been with the Juez de Letras and acquitted, he was in high spirits; he asked me to give him a written character to the Commission, and also a mare which I bought at Xalapa on my first arrival in the country: as I had no positive evidence against the poor fellow, I gave him both. In order to replace him, I had applied to the old Spanish merchant, Don Juan M—a, who told me he knew of a man whose honesty he could answer for: he was the barber and bleeder of the hospital to which