in confidence when we met in Madrid. It has appeared strange to me that
having told it to no one but yourself, it should be known here in all
its details--how he entered the garden; how he fired on Caballuco when
the latter attacked him with his dagger; how Ramos then fired on him
with so sure an aim that he fell to the ground mortally wounded. In
short, my dear friend, in case you should have inadvertently spoken of
this to any one, I will remind you that it is a family secret, and that
will be sufficient for a person as prudent and discreet as yourself.

"Joy! joy! I have just read in one of the papers here that Caballuco had
defeated Brigadier Batalla."



"ORBAJOSA, December 12.

"I have a sad piece of news to give you. The Penitentiary has ceased to
exist for us; not precisely because he has passed to a better life, but
because the poor man has been, ever since last April, so grief-stricken,
so melancholy, so taciturn that you would not know him. There is no
longer in him even a trace of that Attic humor, that decorous and
classic joviality which made him so pleasing. He shuns every body; he
shuts himself up in his house and receives no one; he hardly eats any
thing, and he has broken off all intercourse with the world. If you were
to see him now you would not recognize him, for he is reduced to skin
and bone. The strangest part of the matter is that he has quarreled with
his niece and lives alone, entirely alone, in a miserable cottage in the
suburb of Baidejos. They say now that he will resign his chair in the
choir of the cathedral and go to Rome. Ah! Orbajosa will lose much in
losing her great Latinist. I imagine that many a year will pass before