the 1st or 2d of June, 1808.

The governor of Belver was a very extraordinary personage. If he is
still alive he may demand of me a certificate as to his priority to the
modern hydropathists; the grenadier-captain maintained that pure water,
suitably administered, was a means of treatment for all illnesses, even
for amputations. By listening very patiently to his theories, and never
interrupting him, I won his good opinion. It was at his request, and
from interest in our safety, that a Swiss garrison replaced the Spanish
troop which until then had been employed as the guard of Belver. It was
also through him that I one day learnt that a monk had proposed to the
soldiers who went to bring my food from the town, to put some poison
into one of the dishes.

All my old Majorcan friends had abandoned me at the moment of my
detention. I had had a very sharp correspondence with Don Manuel de
Vacaro in order to obtain the restitution of the passport of safety
which the English Admiralty had granted to us. M. Rodriguez alone
ventured to visit me in full daylight, and bring me every consolation in
his power.

The excellent M. Rodriguez, to while away the monotony of my
incarceration, remitted to me from time to time the journals which were
then published at different parts of the Peninsula. He often sent them
to me without reading them. Once I saw in these journals the recital of
the horrible massacres of which the town of Valencia--I make a mistake,
the _square of the Bull-fights_--had been the theatre, and in which
nearly the whole of the French established in this town (more than 350)
had disappeared under the pike of the bull-fighter. Another journal
contained an article bearing this title: "Relacion de la ahorcadura del