kings. Afterwards we inspected the
cathedral, which is well worthy of a visit, on account of the riches it
contains. I saw the great tabernacle used on Corpus Christi. It is made
of silver, and is so heavy that it requires thirty strong men to lift it.
The Archbishop of Toledo has three hundred thousand duros a year, and his
clergy have four hundred thousand, amounting to two million francs in
French money. One of the canons, as he was shewing me the urns containing
the relics, told me that one of them contained the thirty pieces of
silver for which Judas betrayed our Lord. I begged him to let me see
them, to which he replied severely that the king himself would not have
dared to express such indecent curiosity.

I hastened to apologise, begging him not to take offence at a stranger's
heedless questions; and this seemed to calm his anger.

The Spanish priests are a band of knaves, but one has to treat them with
more respect than one would pay to honest men elsewhere. The following
day we were shewn the museum of natural history. It was rather a dull
exhibition; but, at all events, one could laugh at it without exciting
the wrath of the monks and the terrors of the Inquisition. We were shewn,
amongst other wonders, a stuffed dragon, and the man who exhibited it
said,--

"This proves, gentlemen, that the dragon is not a fabulous animal;" but I
thought there was more of art than nature about the beast. He then shewed
us a basilisk, but instead of slaying us with a glance it only made us
laugh. The greatest wonder of all, however, was nothing else than a
Freemason's apron, which, as the curator very sagely declared, proved the
existence of such an order, whatever some might say.

The journey restored me to health, and when I returned to Aranjuez, I
proceeded to pay my court to all the ministers. The ambassador presented
me to Marquis Grimaldi, with whom I had some conversations on the subject
of the Swiss colony, which was going on badly. I reiterated my opinion
that the colony should be composed of Spaniards.

"Yes," said he, "but Spain is thinly peopled everywhere, and your plan
would amount to impoverishing one district to make another rich."

"Not at all, for if you took ten persons who are dying of poverty in the
Asturias, and placed them in the Sierra Morena, they would not die till
they had begotten fifty children. This fifty would beget two hundred and
so on."

My scheme was laid before a commission, and the