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58 however, that our compatriots of the South were distinguished above all the other foreigners for the ease and grace with which they wore the national costume.

Evening was drawing on, darkness was coming down over the surrounding country, and the moving picture before me was rapidly dissolving, when I perceived four horsemen seemingly making their way toward me. I could not at first distinguish their features, their faces being partly concealed by the wide-spreading sombreros, trimmed with broad ribbons, which they wore; but their appearance caused me to suspect them. These men, dressed in mangas and sarapes, seemed to be hemming me in with the intention of opposing my passage. They immediately spurred their horses and galloped up to me. "Stand!" cried a threatening voice; and, at the same moment, the four horse men surrounded me. They were neither robbers nor alguazils, but men whose amiable character and joyous temperament I often had occasion to appreciate. In one I recognized Don Diego Mercado, student of theology in the college of St. John de Lateran; in another, the officer Don Blas; the third was the hidalgo, Don Romulo D F, a political marplot, who could never be satisfied with the government of the day, but was always looking about for an opportunity to overturn it, who was admitted, notwithstanding this weakness, into the highest society in Mexico; the fourth was one whom I would have least expected to find in a company like the present, and in such a disguise: it was no other, in truth, than my worthy friend, Fray Serapio.

"Do I really see the Reverend Fray Serapio?" I exclaimed. "Do I really see my friend under this bandit costume?"