though so well dressed, had no
luggage; and we began to understand the queer expression of the
coachman's face when he saw him get into the carriage with us. So we
stopped at the corner of the road, and the young gentleman had to get
out.

At the Casa Grande, our friends laughed at us immensely when we told
them of the incident, and offered us twenty to one that he would come
to ask for money within twenty-four hours. He came the same evening,
and brought a wonderful story about his passport not being _en regle_,
and that unless we could lend him ten dollars to bribe the police, he
should be in a dreadful scrape. We referred him to the master of the
house, who said something to him which caused him to depart
precipitately, and we never saw him again; but we heard afterwards that
he had been to the other foreigners in the neighbourhood with various
histories. We made more enquiries about him in the town, and it
appeared that his expedition to Tezcuco was improvised when he saw us
going down to the boat, and of course the visit to the rich old lady
was purely imaginary. Now this youth was not more than eighteen, and
looked and spoke like a gentleman. They say that the class he belonged
to is to be counted rather by thousands than by hundreds in Mexico.
They are the children of white Creoles, or nearly white mestizos; they
get a superficial education and the art of dressing, and with this
slender capital go out into the world to live by their wits, until they
get a government appointment or set up as political adventurers, and so
have a chance of helping themselves out of the public purse, which is
naturally easier and more profitable than mere sponging upon
individuals. One gets to understand the course of Mexican affairs much
better by knowing what sort of raw material the politicians are
recruited from.

We saw some good things in a small collection of antiquities, on this
second visit to Tezcuco. Among them was a nude female figure in
alabaster, four or five feet high, and--comparatively speaking--of high
artistic merit. Such figures are not common in Mexico, and they are
supposed to represent the Aztec Venus, who was called _Tlazolteocihua_,
"Goddess of Pleasure." A figure, laboriously cut in hard stone,
representing a man wearing a jackal's head as a mask, was supposed to
be a figurative representation of the celebrated king of Tezcuco,
_Nezahualcoyotl_, "hungry jackal," of whom Mexican history relates that
he wa