went out to see the fun, and was wounded in a
particularly ignominious manner as he was going back to his house.

Revolutions and sieges form curious episodes in the life of the foreign
merchants in the Republic. Their trade is flourishing, perhaps,--plenty
of buyers and good prices; and hundreds of mules are on the road,
bringing up their wares from the coast. All at once there is a
pronunciamiento. The street-walls are covered with proclamations. Half
the army takes one side, half the other; and crowds of volunteers and
self-made officers join them, in the hope of present pillage or future
emolument. Barricades appear in the streets; and at intervals there is
to be heard the roaring of cannon, and desultory firing of musketry
from the flat roofs, killing a peaceable citizen now and then, but
doing little execution on the enemy.

Trade comes to a dead stop. Our merchant gets his house well furnished
with provisions, shuts the outer shutters, locks up the great gates,
and retires into seclusion for a week or a fortnight, or a month or
two, as may be. At the time we were there he used to run no great risk,
for neither party was hostile to him; and if a stray cannon-ball did
hit his house, or the insurgents shot his cook going out on an
expedition in search of fresh beef, it was only by accident.

Having no business to do, the counting-house would probably take stock,
and balance the books; but when this is finished there is little to be
done but to practice pistol-shooting and hold tournaments in the
court-yard, and to teach the horses to rayar; while the head of the
house sits moodily smoking in his arm-chair, reckoning up how many of
his debtors would be ruined, and wondering whether the loaded mules
with his goods had got into shelter, or had been seized by one party or
the other.

At last the revolution is over. The new president is inaugurated with
pompous speeches. The newspapers announce that now the glorious reign
of justice, order, and prosperity has begun at last. If the millennium
had come, they could not make much more talk about it. Our unfortunate
friend, coming out of his den only to hear dismal news of runaway
debtors and confiscated bales, has to illuminate his house, and set to
getting his affairs into something like order again.

Since we left the country things have got even worse. Formerly, all
that the foreign merchants had to suffer were the incidental miseries
of a state of civil war. Now, t