with the whole force of their
lungs against their unlucky fate. We did not quit this solitary house
until broad day, and we continued our route for Tortosa, not without
having given a suitable recompense to our hosts. I wished to know by
what providential circumstance they happened to have a lamp burning at
that unseasonable hour. "We had killed a pig," they told me, "in the
course of the day, and we were busy preparing the black puddings." Had
the pig lived one day more, or had there been no black puddings, I
should certainly have been no longer in this world, and I should not
have the opportunity to relate the story of the robbers of Oropeza.

Never could I better appreciate the intelligent measure by which the
constituent assembly abolished the ancient division of France into
provinces, and substituted its division into departments, than in
traversing for my triangulation the Spanish border kingdoms of
Catalonia, Valencia, and Aragon. The inhabitants of these three
provinces detested each other cordially, and nothing less than the bond
of a common hatred was necessary to make them act simultaneously against
France. Such was their animosity in 1807 that I could scarcely make use
at the same time of Catalonians, Aragons, and Valencians, when I moved
with my instruments from one station to another. The Valencians, in
particular, were treated by the Catalonians as a light, trifling,
inconsistent people. They were in the habit of saying to me, "_En el
reino de Valencia la carne es verdura, la verdura agua, los hombres
mugeres, las mugeres nada_"; which may be translated thus: "In the
kingdom of Valencia meat is a vegetable, vegetables are water, men are
women, and women nothing."

On the other hand, the Valencians, speaking of the Aragons, used to call
them "_schuros_."

Having asked of a herdsman of this province who had brought some goats
near to one of my stations, what was the origin of this denomination, at
which his compatriots showed themselves so offended:

"I do not know," said he, smiling cunningly at me, "whether I dare
answer you." "Go on, go on," I said to him, "I can hear anything without
being angry." "Well, the word _schuros_ means that, to our great shame,
we have sometimes been governed by French kings. The sovereign, before
assuming power, was bound to promise under oath to respect our freedom
and to articulate in a loud voice the solemn words _lo Juro!_ As he did
not know how to pronounce the J he