for to judge from the yellow and bluish tints of her face the sick
woman seems to be already a decaying corpse, and the glasses and other
objects, accompaniments of long illness, are so minutely reproduced
that even their contents may be distinguished. In looking at these
pictures, which excite the appetite and inspire gay bucolic ideas, one
may perhaps be led to think that the malicious host is well acquainted
with the characters of the majority of those who are to sit at his
table and that, in order to conceal his own way of thinking, he has
hung from the ceiling costly Chinese lanterns; bird-cages without
birds; red, green, and blue globes of frosted glass; faded air-plants;
and dried and inflated fishes, which they call botetes. The view is
closed on the side of the river by curious wooden arches, half Chinese
and half European, affording glimpses of a terrace with arbors and
bowers faintly lighted by paper lanterns of many colors.

In the sala, among massive mirrors and gleaming chandeliers, the
guests are assembled. Here, on a raised platform, stands a grand
piano of great price, which tonight has the additional virtue of not
being played upon. Here, hanging on the wall, is an oil-painting of
a handsome man in full dress, rigid, erect, straight as the tasseled
cane he holds in his stiff, ring-covered fingers--the whole seeming
to say, "Ahem! See how well dressed and how dignified I am!" The
furnishings of the room are elegant and perhaps uncomfortable and
unhealthful, since the master of the house would consider not so
much the comfort and health of his guests as his own ostentation,
"A terrible thing is dysentery," he would say to them, "but you
are sitting in European chairs and that is something you don't find
every day."

This room is almost filled with people, the men being separated from