Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/274

236 As the fruit of our marriage, we have three little boys, whose rearing is confided to the nurse, and to a certain female, the bosom friend of my wife, who is the oracle of the house. We will leave this subject of the children, however, till another opportunity, as the discussion would lead us too far, and proceed to our more immediate object.

I have already mentioned my receipts and revenues: we shall now see what are the expenditures. The rent of the house amounts to four hundred and fifty piastres; and still the lady is not satisfied, because the parlour, she observes, is too small for country dances. The ordinary expences of house-keeping, in eating and shoe-leather, are not less than a thousand piastres. The extraordinaries of calash and mule, promenades and visits, exceed six hundred. Here then we find somewhat more than the two thousand piastres which I am able to scrape together with all my intelligence. But how are we to be clad? And how are the physician and surgeon, who make at least a hundred visits in the year, some for the lying-in, others to the mother, and others to the baby, to be paid? According to a computation I have made, on an average of five years, four faldellins are required for the summer, and at least two for the winter, in addition to which last, a thousand supernumerary dresses are needed, because the faldellin which served for one occasion is not to be brought out in a hurry for another. How is all this to be discharged? And, finally, where are the means to pay the goldsmith who renews the fashions, the tailor who invents, changes, and re-changes them, and, more especially, the merchant who delivers to my wife, on credit, the satins, plushes, velvets, &c.? I am truly so perplexed, that I know not bow to turn myself. The commodes,